I'm trying to tighten the knuckle to ball joint bolt bolt. Can I tighten to the manual recommendation of over 170 ft lbs by using the rack and pinion as a way to hold the knuckle in place. I'm afraid I might bust it.
The first thing you might want to do is to double check your torque value, as that may affect how you approach this. For example, on an '01 Cobra, that nut is only torqued to 129 ft/lbs (= 175 Nm).