I think the answer is "yes," but I did so by setting the ride height low on the damper. So, a modern bike is set with the damper at about 30% of its overall stroke when laden. I shortened the front springs to 14", which allowed me to remove all the preload in the front springs. I would have normally raised the springs with shims to get the 30% value. I measured my laden value at 50%. This meant I was leaving the first 50% of the damper for nothing. But, I wanted to try 50% and found it worked exceptionally well. I got top-notch handling and no wobbles or weirdness. The tracks were smooth enough so the loss of travel did not seem excessive. Even on some bumpy spots, I found that the front suspension would move up into the idle 50% portion. Without any preload a full extension the fork would drop down to its shortened height very quickly.
I was impressed with the performance and I would speculate that it is a better solution than restricting the damper because there were no hard limits. The extension was limited more by gravity, which turned out to be somewhat kind in this test.
I do believe the best answer is the new steering stem because it should not care about the springs or the damper. With the short springs, you can still get into trouble if you have disc brakes or if your front end becomes airborne while cresting a hill.
David
