Well I had some freetime today to look at it and realized that I made the problem a lot harder on myself. I Its much easier if the forks are still in the triple tree since then the stanchion is clamped down, but since I'm attempting this first on a spare set of forks before I do it for real I didn't have that luxury. It turns out that when I was pressing down on the top cap I needed to hold onto the stanchion, but my vital mistake was just pushing down on the cap and letting the spring/dampening rod compress, which puts far too much pressure on the cap. When I realized this I just held onto the stanchion with one hand was was fairly easily able to press down the cap with the other, but then I ran out of hands
I went through the link that Ducatiman posted again (which is different than the wiki entry I found for fork seal change and had some different info) and figured I'd try the screw trick. I drill a screw into my workbech about waist high, pressed the cap into it, and popped the clip and cap right out!
Thanks for the help everyone. I know that I am starting with limited knowledge and confidence, but I think that in the end I'll learn quite a bit. Until next time I have a stupid question
