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I would not call using 800lbs on a 500/600 lbs rating bearing a gross overload.

Bear (pun intended) in mind two things:

a) There is always a safety margin in setting load limits in engineering. Typically I would expect a safety margin of 100% on a bearing such as this meaning it will take 1000-1200 lbs without catastrophic failure.

b) As long as the bearing is within its catastrophic failure mode limit it is just a case of load vs life--assuming all other things (lubrication etc) are equal. Bearing (another pun--sorry!) in mind that bearing lives are measured in terms of tens of thousands of hours then I can well understand that these bearings will last for as long as we want in our clutch application.IMHO they will probably outlive us. Any more than that is I suggest overkill.

As always good engineering is about things that work in practice even if the theory points towards them being a bit questionable.

HTH