I literally had to scroll back up to see if my chassis guy posted that. He broke it down just like that. Especially the tie rod and rack location goodies.
Ish. I'm a mechanical designer/engineer and deal with geometry a lot. Understanding the engineering, manufacturing, and production side of things means I often better comprehend the 'whys' and 'hows' of OEM design. That said, I've only dabbled with chassis stuff a bit myself, but have seen and known folks who do some strange stuff that works great depending on the application. Too many people make too much fuss over small stuff. If you're building a road racer, then ackerman will probably mean something, but it's not the boogeyman that magazines make it out to be.
The thing is: there are racks which can be mounted behind the K and retain the stock steering arms. The hard part is actually fabbing mounts for the rack and then getting the steering shaft to it. There was an aussie outfit (pentastar parts) that now looks defunct that sold some brackets which are welded to the K member. The next challenge is getting a decent run radius because the steering arms aren't made for R&P and most racks have limited tie rod travel. Lots of the weld-in or bolt-in stuff tends to increase the A body's tight turn radius by quite a bit (but then, so does disc brakes).
I once looked into what it would take to use a K-car rack (possibly from an L body) mounted on weld-on tabs on the K member and it looked promising but I never went any farther.
