The slop in the steering rack isn't a huge issue as long as your rack works smoothly and your car tracks straight. Like AMO3GT mentioned you do need a little slop. If you take all the slop out of a car it will never track straight. Found this out years ago when racing dirt oval. I was really proud of mysleft for shimming all the slop out of my car only to find out that it would never track straight. Actually took a few shims out of the car to get some slop back and the car tracked perfectly.