Rack and Pinion and steering gear?

I bought it at an auction it and it had been rear ended on the driver side not super bad, but obviously a pretty hard hit The outer tie rods were both bent, once I got apart the inner were trashed as well when I drove it the steering wheel had quite a bit of slack in it, and the steering wheel was not straight. It was pointed towards the left about 3 o’clock position. So once I put the rear stabilizer bar bushing and new bracket, ( the wreck had pushed the stabilizer bar out of driver side link and ripped it from one bracket) I drove it and the tire shop for alignment, were squealing really bad at about 3040 miles an hour so I took it to the alignment shop and then the ones that pointed out the front tire rods and told me that I needed to start there and I might want to think about replacing my rack and pinion because it was leaking, I don’t think it’s a terribly awful leak, but has me wondering if I do need to replace it because the plastic cushion (spacer) on driver side only moved about 1/4in from inner tie rod and the passenger side moves freely up n down shaft, then I thought maybe it’s designed that way because the gearbox and stuffs on drivers side idk ! Lol but had me wondering also my replacement parts were supposed to come with metal washer and they forgot to put it in shipment, but it kind of confuses me because there wasn’t a metal stop washer on there.(You been to the tabs down onto the inner tire rod) and a lot of the replacement parts don’t include that part but some do. And I can’t seem to find a solid answer on yes, no that’s correct or incorrect I think it came from the factory like that. I don’t believe anybody’s previously replace the tie rods just for the simple fact that it was the original metal clamp around the Bello boot unless somebody was very anal on the way they repaired it and if that’s so then I figure they would be bright enough not to forget the metal stop washers if that was needed. And when I look up the shaft on the driver's side, there seems to be like another yellow plastic piece. All upload pictures. I’m sorry I thought I had.

Here the driver side with mystery plastic piece on shaft.

Here’s the amount of fluid that was inside bellow boot on driver side, passenger side was dry.

Oh yea, and it’s all wheel drive 3.6 v6.

No up the shaft some more.

I tried to point to it best I could with red arrow.