Steering Rack Question, For those knowledgeable about steering racks. Options

[richee3]

This is probably a stupid question. The answer seems fairly obvious to me, but I want to run it by you guys and check anyway. I ran a quick search through the threads, but didn't see anything useful. My car has 172k on it now, and it feels like it's been on some rough roads in the past. I had a '96 before this with tighter steering, my stepmom's '09 Camry obviously feels loads better, and one of my friends just bought a 2000 Celica GT-S that feels much sharper than my car. The age and wear of my car compared to the other 3 cars I mentioned says that it's obviously much older and shouldn't feel the same anyway, but it's not feeling a little worse, it feels a LOT worse. The steering is still responsive, just not tight, if that makes any sense to anyone. My dad doesn't take care of his truck at all ('97 GMC Sierra, 195K miles) and the feeling in his truck and my car is very similar. It feels like the steering is just looser than it should be. This car, from the day I've had it, has a tendency to pull whichever direction the road slants to.

As some of you know, I will be swapping a 3S-GTE into my car very soon, and I got a quote from my local Toyota dealership, and a rebuilt steering rack is only $300. I can get a brand new one for $900, but that's quite a bit of money. It seems like a good time to swap the new steering rack in, while I have the motor pulled.

My question is, is it really a worn out steering rack that I'm feeling? I have no doubt that this car was abused before I got it. It's likely seen some rough roads, since all 4 struts were profoundly blown when I bought the car with 93,000 miles on it. Would I be wasting my money to put a rebuilt steering rack in the car when I put the new motor in? Would that make anything feel any better? I just don't want to get a lot of suspension work done to the car to make it handle better if I can't steer the thing anyway.

Thanks for your input, guys.