Yeah, you definitely want to keep your spacing proper with a suspension fork. They don't like to be on axles with O.L.D. much narrower or wider than the fork, and as you've seen, will bind the fork right up. I encountered that myself, and had to adjust the spacing on my Sturmey front hub for my RockShox.
O.L.D @ Sheldon:
A glossary of bicycle terms with extensive internal cross referencing. This is spread across 30 different files.
www.sheldonbrown.com