Let the carnage begin. Not really but with the motor out and full access to everything it took A LOT of self control to not to a major cam upgrade (already has small cam upgrade) or more head work. So I focused on finding the rest of the needle bearings first, nothing in the pan except pieces of the retaining cup that is press fit into the rocker body, good to find, but not what I am looking for.
After popping the heads off and removing the pushrods and lifter trays, the 4 offending neeldes were found, all of them were stuck in the lifter trays.

So that was good news, everything was accounted for. Now the hard part of where to draw the "upgrade" line. This can be a slippery slope, if I do A, then I might as well do B, but then I should do C while I'm at it.....and so and so....we've all been there. So I upgraded the potential known weak points of the early LS1's. First up, ported LS6 oil pump , which proved to be an easy deal, except for breaking loosee the balancer bolt (wow is that thing tight). Next up, because I was there (here's that slippery slope) I upgraded to an LS2 timing chain. What a huge difference in the size of the links, pins etc. Old chain on left, new chain on right, just in case you can't tell. Last durability upgrade, the rod bolts. After alot of sitting on the fence I decided to go ahead put Katech rod bolts in.

While I was there I checked the rod bearing on each cylinder and all the wear was well withing the normal range for motor with 59K, no scuffs, digs, copper showing or other abnomalities. At that point I stopped.