RogerC,
It is folks like you and, reports like this, that have caused me to delay for quite a while on rebuilding/modifying my fork assemblies. I too have had a left front fork seal leak now for well over 2-3 years and, as of yet, I have yet to find and read, a 100% satisfaction rate, of the PMT change-over.
I and many others have brought this "disable the ADV" thing up a few zillion times on here and, as you can read, there are still mixed emotions on whether or not to disable it. Our bike is an '08 with 28K on the clock and, I check on a fairly frequent basis, the actual fork movement by viewing through the tunnel.
We live in Lake Havasu City AZ and are presently in San Diego. We loaded up the bike, put the dog carrier on the trunk, and loaded and hooked the trailer and headed west. I had plenty of time crossing multiple areas of the desert between home and San Diego to observe the tops of those forks, moving up and down rapidly to correspond to the existing road surface.
I don't know just how many ADVs actually LOCK UP which, they say, basically does not allow the forks to move at all which, would mean you have ZERO front suspension. Yeah, I could see how that would be a bone jarring ride. Well, ours does not do that. As stated, the forks do travel up and down during regular freeway speeds.
I have come dangerously close to ordering up a set of PMTs and, because of the dissatisfaction of the ride, after the install, by some, I'm not sure YET! This is my second GL 1800 and both have rode and driven the same. And both have not had any issues with the ADV. I, like many, would like a top notch smoother ride. That's what owning a 900 lb. rolling couch is all about, at least to me. I didn't by it to compete with Ninja racers on the Dragon.
Many, many folks have complained over the years on this forum about how "slushy" the suspension of the 1800 is and, how its own weight will use up about 1/2 the fork travel, after letting it off the center stand. Well, it does for sure use up quite a bit of the fork travel. So, I'm still not sure of my next move. Your report, to me, still causes doubt as to the actual "Upgrade" claimed by so many.
Is your install malfunctioning, heck, I don't know. I'm just reading and taking all this in. Sooner or later, I'll have to do something because, I'll run out of fork oil after wiping mine off a few zillion times. Then, I'll have to make some sort of move.
Scott