JVS-
Thanks for the advice. My fender and fork covering tubes are already ruined from a bad dealer installation, so I tried a couple of different removal dances and found one I like. I'll take care when putting the new ones on...
I'm taking a lunch break, in the middle of the job right now. I've got the forks off the bike with the caps off. I thought I'd add my $0.02 while I'm here...
I printed Scotty's tutorial, and have it in front of me in the garage. Everything is exactly as he's said so far. I'm using the cut-off long end of a 12mm allen wrench - I took a couple of additional protective steps which seemed to help. First, I removed both ends of the clutch cable from the lower arm and handlebar lever, pulled a couple of inches up through the nacelle, and tied the upper cable end back out of the way towards the handlebar mounting plate, to get it further away from the rotating allen tool, and in case I did damage the casing, I could wrap it with tape and slide it back down inside the nacelle, out of sight and ostensibly protected from the weather. That was good, because the allen wrench quicky chewed through my rags and just began to scuff the cable housing. Then I wrapped most of the length of the allen tool with some electric tape to soften the corners, removed all of the rags so I could see what I was doing, and I found that I could take a single turn of triple-thickness rag around the tool itself and let it rotate with the tool against the cables rather than let the tool rotate against the rag. Worked a treat, and all I had to do when I was done was wipe some rag lint off the cable housing and rubber grommit it passes through.
The removal of the clutch cable gave me the additional advantage of being able to brace against the left side of the handle bar while I tried to break those difficult reverse-thread fittings - standing at the left-front of the bike, tool in two hands for strength and stability, the handle bar against my hip. Worked great. The fork legs weren't all that tight; I had no trouble loosening them. The caps were tight, but I was just able to break them loose using my 18" breaker bar while bracing the handlebar against my hip.
Full disclosure: I mistakenly completely removed both legs before I loosened the caps, so I had to go back a step and clamp them back into the triple tree to get to the caps. Since the uppers appear to be exactly the same, I used the left-side triple tree mount to loosen both caps, so I could take advantage of my left-side handle bar bracing trick.
When I removed the fork legs, I found the top caps free of the threads, but also popped up free beyond the o-ring, just sitting there for me to pick up - if I tip the fork, it'll fall right off. It feels like an internal spring is pushing it. I don't know if that suggests anything, good or bad, about springs or oil quantities or whatever, but it's one less little hurdle..