I had occasion to visit the factory very soon after Yamaha bought the rights. There were hundreds, though probably not thousands, of these forks stacked up waiting for the scrap man. All were aluminum blade and crown units, with the steerer sheered off.
I don't know how many snapped after the steel plug modification, but it was still many more than would be acceptable.
In any case this wasn't a case of an overly cautious recall after a small number of failures, this was failure on a grand scale.
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