Ahhh yes.....Changing from PS to Manual necessitates the chop and reconstruct of the steering shaft. I noticed when I looked back at your pic, your shaft stub on the rack is a lot longer than mine. I bought a universal rack with a short shaft to keep the joint as far away from header space as possible which means I have to add a pice of shaft to the middle hence my union instead of a u joint. I will have the new u- joint right off the rack and then a stub of new shaft and then the union seen in the pics, and then the cut off original shaft .
How much shaft movement is there in the column? I noticed that since you pulled yours out it gets real close to the inner, (hence removing the offending screw) but this closeness to the fender helps me with header clearance so I may try pulling on the column shaft. How hard do you have to pull to get it to move down?