"Inside-out" seal

[Ed Landstrom]

I made the rounds of the bearing and truck parts suppliers today. None of them could find any of the 14 cross-match numbers. One old codger had a stack of the old paper catalogues that no-one else remembers, and spent half an hour going through them and calling contacts who usually have obsolete stock. No luck.

So what's wrong with these cross-matches? Did manufacturers use different numbers in the UK? ALL of them?
Are all of these numbers as obsolete as the GMC number?
One supplier suggested that this may be a proprietory part that was made only for GM, and never listed as available to anyone else.
I did notice that the list was published by a Chinese company, so maybe it's all lies. Though the dimensions they list are correct.

While looking at alternatives, it occurred to me that a simple way to solve the problem, rather than trying to polish the shaft, would be to machine a half-inch thick annular disc, a press fit on the shaft, with appropriate clearance in the bore, then cutting an o-ring groove in its outer edge. The o-ring would then serve as the seal. What am I missing? Why wouldn't this work?