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According to Sheldon:
"Front drive has much to recommend it...It puts less torsional stress on the crossover bottom bracket. A front-drive setup will usually provide better front shifting, and you never have to worry about cross-chaining, since the chain run is so long that all gears may be used without concern for the chain angle "According to John Allen:
"Stresses on the bottom brackets and the frame are lower than with rear crossover drive"I haven't done the maths, but I have a feeling that front drive tries to bend the drain pipe less, which would probably be a good thing on a frame with no diagonal tubes.
gbj_tester-
All sounds good on paper, but then why are the vast majority or tandems set up with the drive being at the rear?
The main disadvantages I can think of are weight and chain slap (perhaps mitigated by the roller set up on the Gitane above, but that leads to more resistance in the system). Any chain suck or dropped chains could become more interesting too with such a long length of chain and two riders to think about.
Hovis
Probably yeah. Not sure whats stopping the owner from swapping the two crank arms front and back over and having it like every other tandem in the world?