The hardest part about it is figuring out where what is to know what you are doing. I'de say 70% of your time would be spent figuring out one side, then the other would be a snap. Basically you are taking off the boot, turning the wheel all the way to one side, knocking a roll pin out, untwisting/seperating inner tie rod from outter as well as the rack, and reverse procedure. Either way you go, you have to face an alignment afterwards, so factor that one in your budget as well.
there is no roll pin to knock out of an innertierod.you need a special tool to remove the inner tie rod.you may be able to get a pipe wrench on it to break it loose if you don't have the tool.use loctite on the inner tierod when you put the new one back on.
for the cost differential, i would rather install a reman'd/new rack. the rest of the components in the rack have seen some miles as well. just my thinking. good luck.
I just got a remanufactured unit from Advance Auto. It was about $140. The swap was pretty straightforward. I think that you're better off doing it that way than trying to just replace the inners. You aren't really saving much money and it's a pain to do, from what I hear. Count your threads on your outers, and you might not even need an alignment. I counted the threads on mine and put the outer tie rods exactly where they were before. I was paranoid, so I took it to the alignment shop anyway. The shop said it was perfect and didn't need an alignment. Yeah! Damn I'm good!
yea i replaced one of my tie rods which was easy, but about 3 months later i had to replace my whole rack and pinion wich was only about 100$ at autozone for a remanafactured one, it came with inner tie rods and boots and everthing, it was really pretty easy to do also, there are two bolts holding the rack on, all you have to do is disconnect the lines going to and from it and get the inner tie rods off, getting the inner tie rods off can be a pain in the ass though, you have to rent a tool kit from oriellys or autozone