Pull the pan and check for cracked or broken pickup. That pickup may be living in a different space right now. I've been there. It could also be the root of that obstruction or metallic noise you speak of. Others here have suggested that also. These pickups will crack in the pipethreads, especially if they are long, reused a few times, overtightened, or the pan bottoming out on the road/track surface.If the oil was highly contaminated with gas, as you report, it would probably be much harder to reprime after a period of shutdown. I had an old big block Dart race car. I bottomed it out on a deep Milodon oil pan. It didn't look bad but after I pulled the pan the pickup FELL OFF when I bumped it with my hand. Lucky I shut it off early. It didn't hurt the crank or bearings. You're lower end has been "gas washed" and won't prime. I suggest you don't keep trying to rotate it over. Nothing good will come of it. Good luck here. Bill

You say the engine takes effort to turn over , pull all the plugs and spin the engine over by hand , if it's still a struggle then you have an issue somewhere inside. As far as the pump goes, the oil enters the pump then goes to the filter so anything that makes it past the pickup screen goes thru the pump before it gets trapped in the filter.

If it was my engine I'd be pulling the pan and looking inside instead of ignoring the stuck float issue that dumped more than normal amount of fuel into the cylinders. To pull the pan you need to pull out the center link , unbolt the motor mounts and raise the front of the engine a small amount to get the pan out .

There are grooves inside the pump where the relief spring plunger goes; cell phone camera didn't quite capture the image I wanted. When I first started this process to rotate engine, plugs were pulled and carb blocked @ WoT, but still tough to turn. This was the first filter. What I mean by that is oil pan full of gas, so I did an oil change with fresh filter (I use WIX 51515).
New pump for sure. What I'm gonna do is this. The Rodeo is in town, and as usual, they brought the cold, rainy weather with them. Will be warm and sunny next week. I'm persuaded to pull the oil pan, and as recommended, check crank and rods for looseness, check the oil pick-up tube. When engine rebuilt in '97, I had machinist modify block to use a hemi 1/2" pick-up tube. I'm using a windage tray. Don't know if this is useful info.
Right now, pessimistically, I think I'm looking at a short block rebuild. But, you guys have given me areas to work on that I did not realize that show some hope.
If all is well with crank, rods, and pick-up, as recommended, I'll put engine together and see what happens.
Alrighty, well the fun begins on Monday. Enjoy your weekend.

What weight of oil are you using ? ?

Pulled oil pan and this is what I found. Image of oil pan interior is how I found it when pan was dropped. Have no idea where the spring came from. #6 & #8 connecting rods are loose; can move them with fingers. Any idea what is with orangish color on rods?

Use Quaker State 10w 40. I think engine is terminal and looking at a rebuild. As someone posted, crank and rods got washed in gas and if I understand correctly, this means that they are trashed. You think crank is salvageable? It's a forged factory crank. Grasping at straws here.
Thanks everyone for providing constructive suggestions on my engine situation.

Looks like an oil pump pressure relief spring?

How big is that spring? Carter style metering rod spring? Looks pretty good for a trip down the motor.

Pull your fuel pump. Pictures are hard to tell but it could be off the fuel pump. Pull the motor and get it evaluated.

I've seen rods discolor when the bearing went bad.

I AGREE Or one from another pump along the way.
Are the other chunks metallic?
Side to side movement on the rods is normal to a point. Can't remember the specs but they're in the books. Up and down movement
I would proceed with pulling a few bearing caps before giving the motor it's last rites

That rod is copper dipped, when a rod could not be sized to specs when new at the factory those rods went through a copper dip process to fill in the defects then were remachined. As far as the engine goes pull it before you have nothing left, if it turns over hard it is done.

Looks like a handy spare oil pressure relief spring in there. Hell of a place to store it.

Rods are loose? Side to side or up and down? Side to side is normal.
The orange color is copper plating which Chrysler did to salvage otherwise out of spec rods. They didn't like wasting parts.

The rod motion is side to side, but it is a lot. The other rods have no wiggle at all. I'm not a big guy, and I was feeling uncomfortable about how much oomph I had to use to turn the crank, so I stopped. The spring is a mystery. About 3 years ago, my oil pan gaskets got weepy because I torqued them crushed. While I had pan off, I checked rods and crank-all was well, tight. OCD about cleaning the pan. Just can't imagine how it got in there. Like the idea of pulling fuel pump to see if it grenaded. That spring does like similar to the one in a fuel pump. Put a new fuel pump a month or so ago which began this debacle. Thanks, again

There is no way for that spring to get into the oil pan from the pump on any Mopar BB or gen 2 hemi, NO WAY
Someone drop that into the motor from the top or it got left in the motor somehow when it was being assembled.
Do the loose rods push up and down or only sideways ? If only sideways your probably okay
If up and down start taking the motor apart starting with those two rod caps to make sure it is not just a set of bad rod bearings scored up.
Mopar would copper coat rebuilt rods or rods that had to be work on to meet their minimum specs for production engine use
I've seen a ton of them over the years.

That's what had me so puzzled, HTF did that get there.

Years ago, I was swapping out a 225 for a 360 in my 72 Dart. I bought a running 79 Doda that had been hit in the left rear hard enough to S shape the leaf spring. Once I got it out of the Cordoba I put it on an engine stand and pulled the pan to look at the bearings. Based on the date codes and other pointers I was pretty sure no one had ever been in there before.

I found a nut in the crankcase. Specifically a con rod nut. That engine had 17 con rods nuts inside it, 16 installed, one loose. I can only assume that during the build someone dropped a con rod nut and just grabbed another rather than find the loose one.

Finding loose items in the pan doesn't necessarily mean they did any damage. If the spring has no evidence of damage then there is like no damage elsewhere.