New fork lowers installed. Seems to have fixed the wheel alignment and the fork definitely feels better.

That explains the obvious heating at the bases, i wondered what had been going on in history.
So did you heat to try & bend the axle lugs.
Be a good bump that happened to bend them.
Maybe put the axle through both forks without wheel & sit a square on the axle.
In theory it should be anything but square up the inside edge of both.
Man we had nightmares with RD350's which generaly got front end accident damage, bent forks etc.
Almost every time the alloy sliders got bent which wasn't visible initaly but new tubes would jam up past about halfway. Was a learning curve for doing insurance quotes on accident repairs after that.
Thanks for the update. ps, i guess the tubes/stansions are straight or new.

Well there ya go, while i'm half asleep typing, you fixed it. Thats good. Ignore my post haha.
Should be rideable no hands now without falling one way now.

So when I got the old fork completely apart, I observed that it was the shaft that was slightly bent...not the axle lugs. The new (used) parts were complete with lowers, shafts and pistons. It looks like I'll be good to go. Thanks for the support!