Originally Posted by
Scott Bontz
FB, you write 'Slack is slack so as long as there's some slack at the tightest place.' This has been my thinking. If there is always some slack, however small, there is never really any tension. So why would it matter to add lots of slack rather than to just allow the minimum necessary? That's a mostly rhetorical question, at least for you. But in this thread I have been getting, or interpreting, conflicting messages.
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As you correctly gather there's no reason to add more slack than necessary. The standard sag guideline is only that, and based on typical eccentricity in the sprockets. But even industrial applications where there's good ability to control conditions leave generous slack.
On single speed freewheel applications, there's no reason to try to minimize backlash because it's not relevant, so it pays to err high.
But fixed wheel riders like to minimize the backlash because it feels better that way (the bike doesn't care). But dirt on the chains rollers can effectively make sprockets bigger and pull out some slack, so if that's your experience, allow for it.
BITD, this was never a big deal and nobody fretted over it, we simply pulled out the slack, leaving some in accordance with the guideline. However, when fixies became trendy some years back, newbs with no sense of history or old timers to offer guidance, misinterpreted the instruction to properly adjust chain tension to imply that was supposed to be tension.
If, some 5 years back we'd said,"be sure to properly set the chain slack", (as I do now) there probably wouldn't be any confusion, controversy or discussion.