Right, my favorite machine shops around here want a small fortune.Have your own made from stainless at your favorite machine shop and be done with it.
Flint sand in red clay. Eats spacers, chains and sprockets like they are made out of butter. I laugh at the Ironman sprockets guaranteed for a year. I'd LOVE to get a year out of a sprocket or chain.Four sets? Thats absurd. Do you pressure wash? Its been water world around here this year and I'm still fine.
I have a small local shop here that does walk in jobs. Its a small run CNC shop but the guy does the prototypes/one offs manually. To dupe a set of spacers cost me $60 last time. Probably more now, but worth every penny. All I do is pull the wheels every few rides to clean and regrease the seals. I also pack a lot of grease between the seal and bearing. If the seal/spacer fit remains tight due to a good hard spacer, no dirt gets under the lips, and everything lasts a long time.
The fork tubes still look perfect with no obvious tube wear which surprises me. The teflon is history on the lowers. I now use Silkolene synthetic oil @ 7.5wt.Sounds like you have an extreme condition to deal with. Thats too bad. Do you go through conntershaft seals/collars as well?
The greased cord trick under the fork wiper is a good, been doing that for years. Fifty hrs on bushings, wow. The teflon is gone when they are pulled? Check your uppers for anodizing wear.
You have to be careful with this. Sometimes the forks will bind.The axle seals work fine; stainless spacers are great and speedi sleeves are the next best thing. Just a short note about assembly. You need to be sure the axle is drawn over against the left fork leg. This pulls all the parts tight so the spacers stay fixed to the axle (stationary). If the axle is not drawn up fully, the spacers can creep and water will get past the faces that would normally be tight against each other.
Only lightly snug the left pinch bolts, then draw up the axle tight. Final tighten the left pinch bolts then center the right leg and do up it's pinch pinch bolts.
If the left pinch bolts are initially too tight, your axle nut could be tight, but not be drawing everything together.