Ok everyone, I'm posting the rest of the process just in case anyone is ever in the same boat with a bad steering rack.
As my response above stated, I ended up getting a used steering rack off car-part.com. Once we received the rack we verified that itwas good, and set about removing the old rack for the replacement.
Disclamer: This was done a few weeks ago with my father's assistance (he is a mechanic). I will do my best to list everything as accurately as possible.
We started by putting her on the lift and getting the wheels an inch or two off the ground, then going in through the driver side wheel well and disconnecting the steering wheel. I believe we got the steering wheel to lock in place first with a good wiggle while off.
Next we removed both wheel, and disconnected the outer tie rods as well as the in wheel well covers. The removal of the outer tie rods was done with a tie rod end removal tool.
Next, we undid the nuts holding the rack to the tub. I definitely recall that there were bolts sticking out of the frame, which we secured by using locking vise pliers to hold them in place. We didn't know where exactly they'd go if they fell back into the tub and boy did we not want to find out.
At this point we could twist the rack and get it to move around semi-freely. The challenge with removing it at this point was now that we were forced to remove it from the driver's side due to conflict with the washer fluid reservoir.
As we were trying to get the rack free, we also realized that although the driver's side was the way to go, we'd still need to make a bit more space.
At this point we loosened the black box you see below (ABS?), as well as disconnecting and plugging off a brake line.
There were some bolts on the abs unit that were tricky to get to, so heads up.
With these complete we had to gently pivot and twist the rack and we were able to get it out.
To put the new rack in, we tied a steel wire to one side in order to fish through the fairly tight gap.
Once the rack was in, we reconnected the bolts for the rack, reattached the outer tie rods, reconnected the screws for the abs(?) unit, reattached the brake line, reattached the steering wheel, and did a "Alignment" which was essentially only good enough to get me to an alignment shop. We also did a brake bleed and then we were done.
I took the car immediately to my dealer who did the alignment, and the car has been good as new since.
If anyone has any questions or wants to point out any inaccuracies please let me know and I can update this post for future reference. It was very enjoyable to spend time with my dad and work on something that wasn't too insanely difficult, and I'm glad I got this todo item out of the way.
