New 03 7.3 Excursion owner with a couple questions

[subeng]

Hi, just bought a 2003 Limited with 153,000 miles on it. Meticulously maintained by a friend of mine who passed away last winter in a tragic avalanche accident.

Anyway, it has an edge juice w/attitude and a full turbo back MBRP exhaust. It was never used for towing, just crosscountry driving. My first question involves the transmission, what is the better mod to deal with the higher tuner settings: a new valve body/shift kit, an electronic tranny controller, or both? Eventually when the converter dies I'll get a nice converter but until then what is the best way to firm up the tranny to deal with the increased power?

Also I'm tracking down a front end wobble and clunk. The clunk seems to be right under my feet on the driver's side so I'm assuming its the sway bar link bushings and will replace them. As far as the wobble, the pitman arm ball joint is bad, have a new one to replace that and I can grab the steering stabilizer and pull it foward and back about an 1/8" so I'm pretty sure it is shot. I'm also leaning towards just replacing all the ball joints since it has 153,000 on it but I jacked each side up and put a 6 foot long 2X6 under the tires and pulled up on them and could not get a clunk to save my life so I don't think they are bad. Could the stabilizer and pitman arm joint be enough to cause a bad wobble by themselves?

Additionally, the front pinion seal has a small leak. Is this as easy as just pulling the nut and u joint piece off, pull the old seal out and putting a new seal in and bolting the u joint piece back on? I'm hoping it is that easy, don't want to deal with crush sleeves, I couldn't find a good thread that addressed it.

Thanks ahead of time for any help. I bought it in Colorado and drove it straight thru back to Washington and am truly in love with it already. It is my wife's new vehicle and two trips in it and she has fallen in love with it also. This is the ultimate cross country touring vehicle.