Inner tie rod replacement
 

I have a complete steering rack with inner and outer tie rods. Is a crow foot required to remove the inner from the steering rack or just crescent wrench it? Any tips on doing this?

I've used just a crescent wrench to remove them, worked fine for me.

Use some locktite on the threads when you reinstall it onto the rack.

do yourself and the next person to work on the suspension, use blue locktite

Red is actually recommended and most often will come in the box of the replacement part. Just don't tighten the shit out of it and it won't take a lot of torque to break it loose.

Why is loctite needed? Are those retaining washers I just spent $4/each on totally useless?

Yes.