I'm rehabbing a 35 year old steel trailer that I bought with a Hobie 14 about 3 years ago. It's mostly sat in a storage lot until now. It's your typical small catamaran trailer - 1000 lb capacity.

The wheel bearings were growling pretty bad when I brought it home, so I decided to replace the hubs and bearings along with the springs that were badly rusted.

Long story short: I can't find replacement bearings anywhere.

The number on the rim of the old bearings is L44648. The closest common bearing is L44649 that fits a 1.0625" axle.

I measured the axle diameter on the trailer and it's 1.134" (approximately - I don't have a micrometer) L44649 bearings will not fit on the axle - I've tried.

The L44649 bearings appear identical to L44648 bearings except for the bore (axle) diameter.

Do I:
1) Spend a lot of time / $ tracking down the odd bearings?
2) Grind the 0.0715 off the common bearings / axle until they fit?
3) Spend $100 on a new, common diameter axle?

I'm seriously tempted to go with #2, since I have all the parts, but how critical are the tolerances between the axle and the bearing?

The plan would be to use emery cloth on the axle stubs to smooth them out, but not take off a significant amount of material. The bores of the L44649 bearings would be carefully ground by hand using a Dremel tool until they just fit on the axle. Based on the measurements above, I'd be taking off about 1/32" of the material in the bore. Keeping it perfectly circular will be the biggest challenge.

Whaddaya think?