I never ended up getting that hole drilled all the way through so I replaced the roller bearing with a solid brass*?* bushing from livefastmotors. I am also running oil with 20% castor oil.

Thanks for all the ideas.

A theory for one of the failure modes of the roller bearing is that it might "walk" on the wrist pin and become off-center, then fail.

The bike is running well and so far has about 4 hours. I need to figure out which type of front brake will fit and order that.

Here's the bike: