I wouldn’t bother checking seals if they are feeling very sticky with a juddering through the travel (with no front brake applied). I would drop the lowers and check the uppers to see if they’ve been twisted/bent. You can sight one edge through to the other and check how parallel they are. I’ve seen a few uppers like this that have caused hellish binding.
The lowers could also have taken a bit of a thrash. Check those out by sighting them in different ways to see if anything shows up. Around 98 you would quite often find Marzocchi’s with twisted braces causing a lot of binding. Once the lowers were removed the legs weren’t running parallel at all. I’ve seen this on non bolt-on braced lowers too so it’s worth a look.
Not saying this is the fault by any means but worth looking into. Another thing, do they feel smooth compressing them with the brake off? I’m not saying you must be checking them with the brake on but so many people check fork travel with the brake applied and miss out on so many problems with their forks.