there are two collars that are on either side of my front wheel, is one supposed to be shorter than the other? seems to me there is no reason that one should be shorter than the other.

 

if i remeber right ones shorter. this is when bikebandit is your friend, when u get stuff apart and dont remeber u can go there and look at their exploded parts pics and then you know which one goes where.

 

Dunno why one is shorter. I can tell you what will happen if one isn't: rotor will lock the front wheel on the fork. My F3 strangely had equal sized collars. When I torqued the tire down to spec, front tire wouldn't budge.

I checked the manual and vangill is correct.

 

unfortunatly bike bandits diagram shows them being the same length....bad diagram, however, the longer one goes on the throttle side of the bike.... i answered my own question by paying a little more attention to things, the reason the collars are different sizes is because the axle has a flange on the clutch side of the bike that takes up the space left over from the shorter collar......in case anyone was wondering