Thread: Gear help
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Old 11-05-06, 08:04 AM
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Retro Grouch 
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Originally Posted by BROCK SAMPSON
Thanks for the reply, and yeah I find 2 speed to be enough aswell thats why I'm looking into this. Do you know if I could run a 32/22 up the front but with a fixed 13 in the rear? I think this would be best if it works beacause these are basically the only gears I've needed and I wanna lose weight and the hastle of my rears gears.
For a 10 tooth difference on a fixed gear I'm guessing not. The issue is how are you going to take up the chain slack when you're in the 22 tooth chainring?

If you use a derailleur or a chain slack take up device, it will just pivot forward when you try to backpedal. If you had a bike with loooong horizontal drop out slots, it might work but It'd be a PITA to switch gears. For a 10 tooth difference I'm thinking they'll have to be specially designed dropouts, much longer than what you typically see.

If you were to use a flip-flop hub with a 19 cog on the other side, that would accomplish the same thing and might only take dropouts around a couple of inches long.

I used to have a Schwinn Twinn tandem that had an idler pulley to take up the slack in the timing chain. You might be able to weld a slotted piece of metal vertically onto the chainstay and raise or lower the idler pulley as needed to adjust the chainslack. I don't know however if it would be stable enough to handle the stress of backpedaling.
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