Steering Shaft Removal with L/T's

I am getting slop in the steering, when I turn the wheel left or right just a smidge, there is a "loose" feeling before the steering engages. I'm guessing rght now based on searches that the long tubes have wore out the rag joint. I adjusted the steering shaft a while back to get a little more clearance from the headers, but wasn;t able to get the shaft out from in between the headers. There didn;t appear to be room to get the shaft out, however, I was i na rush as I had to get the car back together t ogo to a wedding.

So dumb question is, with long tubes, can the steering shaft be removed/replaced without having to drop the k member or something drastic?

bump