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.