Rack and pinion bushings, tie rod ends, or both?

So, after I placed a new lift along with upper control arms I took the truck to get an alignment. Alignment shop said the tierod ends are bad and would not hold an alignment so they didn’t do one. I took their word for it and ordered new tie rod ends and here I am getting ready to put them in. After jacking the front end up I did a wheel jiggle and the movement appears to all be in my steering rack rather than tie rod ends. I know it’s most likely the bushings here but I’m not sure how much play is supposed to be in the rack upon movement. There is no steering issues that I can feel during driving except when driving down highway >65mph in 4wd which produces some mild shuttering. And then there’s the noticeable bellows with some grease, my steering reservoir had gone down but not by much.

I’m really wondering what the chances are it’s just the bushings and not the tie rod ends here.

https://youtube.com/shorts/tXgm7Mqs35I?feature=share

Hopefully link works since I just copied and pasted it. Embedded link wouldn’t work from YouTube

 

I’ll change out the bushing first and see what else is wrong.
I think the shop didn’t even look at it, they just wiggle it and assume it’s tie rod ends.

 

Yeah, unfortunately I didn’t have the bushing kit so I just dove in. I wanted to get a full inspection of the tie rods so I just went ahead and popped both off and replaced drivers side bellow while I was there. I left both of the inner tie rods in place due to the fact they looked and felt like they probably did out of the box. Both outers were in surprisingly good shape as well. The boots on the outers were the only questionable part. Plus I kind of ripped them taking the tie rods apart hahah. So I went ahead of replaced both of those.
I ordered a bushing kit online so I’ll tackle that when it arrives. Hope the bushing kit really cleans it up.

with the truck jacked up and steering wheel locked, there still was some play which was coming from the actual steering shaft that’s connected to the steering wheel. Is this play normal? Maybe it’s because I had the steering wheel locked? The amount of play was small, maybe an 1/4 inch turn of shaft when moving wheel left to right.

 

Replacing the bushing should help quite a bit (as long as everything gets torqued properly). I recently replaced my outer ends and it helped with the play in the steering wheel (inners seemed good, too). There is a very small amount of "jitter" when I hit bumps just right, but I think my connection from the steering shaft is a little looses, as well.