Can you explain this one for me a little better? Not sure I follow, and if I need to do it before I order parts it's next on my list.
What he meant is that the crank is cross-drilled. Of the oil that goes to a main bearing, some drips back to the pan but a lot goes through the cross-drilled hole to feed a connecting rod bearing. If junk got into that main bearing, then some junk could have gotten to the associated rod bearing.
I am not aware of any requirement to replace the rod bolts, once opened. AFAIK they can be reused.
The pieces you found are a little reminiscent of wadded-up edges from a thrust bearing. See if you can 'see' the thrust surfaces of whichever main bearing has the thrust bearing incorporated into it. It might be the rear, and probably is, but some engines have it elsewhere and someone will chime in with that information.
A question is 'where did this material get into the oil circuit?'. If the pieces are bigger than the screen on the oil pickup tube, and the screen itself is in good shape, then either something failed that is part of the oil circuit, or detritus was in an oil passage as a result of previous sloppy work.
If it is the former, then perhaps a piece of main or rod bearing; maybe the thrust bearing. If you check the oil flow from the TM you can see what likely areas could introduce chips like you found that are
after the oil screen. It is also possibly chips left behind that were lodged inside an oil passage somewhere, maybe even in the oil passage within the crank, that finally worked their way out.
Could the pieces be from the lower edge of a piston skirt that got 'wedged up' as they were hit by the passing crankshaft throws? Eyeball the bottoms of your pistons. (Absent any other problem there should be no reason why an edge of piston skirt would break off unless it had been disrespected upon assembly.)
This is where the detective work kicks in - the fun part of it - good analysis and discovery can, depending on what is found, make you feel good about not having to tear the whole thing apart.