I figure with a center carrier, mess up an axle -- it's only half the work
Had to give up on the steering arm, gave it a 3rd bending session last night and i'm still 1/4 too close to the a-arm. tubing compressed too much where it kinked. i could heat and try to hammer it, but it'd likely just collapse. I can bend it all i want, but it's not going to get to where it used to be.
Cutting the arm about half-way where it's still straight and round and sectioning in a new end for it.
Other issue to resolve relates back to when i flipped the rack. really screwed up the steering layout i'd created. it raised it much higher than my original design, effectively shortened the tie-rods because of the plunge angle it now has and put me into bumpsteer. I'd originally had it dang near dead on center between the arms, with just about zero bumpsteer or camber change. now the rack end and tie rods cross the upper arms and i'm getting about 3 degrees of bumpsteer. Doesn't seem like much when watching the hub, but it's a lot more when the wheel is on.
I can make a longer through bolt and make a pretty high stand-off to get it closer to parallel with the uppers, but it's a lot of height to add at the steering arm end. Not so good ... but easy. washers and another pair of longer aluminum bolts ... 15 minute deal. May do that as a trial.
Other option, and the one i'm going to probably go with for the long run is to weld a pair of "drop" plates to each tie-rod end (a vertical extension of the clevis i made) at the rack end and drop the rods back to their original position. I have enough extension on the heims in the rack to run them in deeper for the extra tie rod length it will create via the reduced plunge angle.
Only worry about that is the pivoting of the heim end in the rack--might give me a bit of wander at the steering wheel.
Should have jsut gone with the polish steering ....