Hello Rob,
Welcome aboard, I hope you find useful information from the forum. There are other threads dealing with rebulds of an ML7 which maybe useful for you, fairly recently listed too.
Genuine Myford gears are 5/8 inch bore and have been since ML4 days in the 1940's as far as I know. I did look at your link and my first thoughr was that the bore size quoted at 1/2 inch may simply be a typo.
Enjoy the project
Brian