I decided while i had the pan down i would remove oil pump and just inspect the internals. Its a good thing I did, the backside of the outer gear had a gouge in it where a peice of metal has gotten into it so even though it was spinning freely it would have locked up again.
After mulling this over for a while, I realize that it was GOOD that you had a stock drive shaft....
Think about it for a moment...
If you had that same exact failure, but with a hardened drive shaft, and the shaft did not break, where would you be with a chunk of metal floating around in your pump chewing it up, eating itself from the inside, and spreading the debris through your engine? You'd have no idea this was going on and over time your oil pressure would be declining. Instead of a sudden and relatively harmless breakdown, you'd have the heartache of watching your engine die a slow death.
Just a thought.
I would still probably run a hardened shaft myself, but in this particular instance, those are my thoughts.
My mind wanders...