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as long as the interior diameter of my steerer is standard for a 1 1/8" quill
Unlikely, as steerers made for quills are usually butted, the wall thickness needed to fit a quill stem is a bit on the thin side to be used at the crown.
A quill for a 1⅛" steerer (a rare beast, but they did exist) is 1", the quill for a 1" steerer is ⅞" (22.2mm) which is an ID you might actually find at the bottom of a fairly chunky steel 1⅛" steerer, but you could shim it if the ID is a more typical 24mm. The SystemEX thing will be ⅞" with a shim to bring it up to 1", so you'd be looking for a thinner shim. Seems like a lot of hard work for a worse outcome compared with drilling the crown.
gbj_tester-
1 1/8" quills seem reasonably common in the 90's mtb scene so I was hoping that the fork was designed with both applications in mind. Didn't think about butting though. I just need to stop faffing and get the callipers out, the issue is the whole lot needs to slide up there and be flush with the bottom of the crown so if it's not at least 25.4mm it's back to square one.
TvH
I reckon I could sort something using a System EX quill adaptor and an L bracket, as long as the interior diameter of my steerer is standard for a 1 1/8" quill (it's threadless)