[waterboychuck]

John, I'm going to chime in here again. I do not like the way my truck handles in the steering. too much play. I guess that I could go through tightening the box which I did but not much improvement. I have no idea how old you are but I'm 68 and drove cars with drum brakes all the time. One problem with them is when it was raining and I had to drive through a standing water puddle. The method there was to go through the puddle with your left foot on the brake so that the water would not soak the drums. Also if you put drum brakes on a stopping test vs a front wheel disc brake look at the results.
If you install MII rack and pinion you will have to install a different type of steering column as you'll have to put in a double D shaft from one to the other. I do not think that you can keep a standard column with pitman arm to the MII.