My wife and I went to a Giant dealer today to look at an Anthem x 29er w4. I was talking to shop owner about the pains of the Overdrive headtube and he acted like I was crazy that I thought the steerer tube and stem was 1 1/4".
He ended up taking off the stem and spacers to flip them, and we measured and .....he was right! The stem on the 2013 Anthem women's is only 1 1/8"! So any stem and tapered fork will work. I was confused by Giant's marketing which says the Anthem womens models have the OverDrive headtube.
So...is there a differance between OverDrive and OverDrive 2? Is the actual OverDrive2 available only on some of the beefier models.
Last weird thing. The shop owner showed me an Overdrive stem they keep on hand for fitting and it actually has a shim to accept either 1 1/8" or 1 1/4" steer tubes.
So why does Giant make a big deal about OverDrive if that really means nothing?
We ended up buying a 3 month old Anthem x 29er w4, that I probably wouldn't have purchased if it had 1 1/4" headtube. I want to get that Recon silver off there ASAP and that would have been very expensive or next to impossible with 1 1/4".
Anyone have any insights?