Power steering and a 4 speed is going to be fun, had to go with a flaming river ujoint to get that to work, and the zbar still hits the header. Is this an early A ?
The dash regulator is in the temp gage, or the fuel gage I dont remember. but if it is working you can see it pulsing with a mechanical volt meter. if the fuel gage is responding then there probably not an issue with the regulator as it would have taken out the gage or the sending unit in the...
The fuel gage and the temp gage have a nichrome wire that gets hot which makes the gage move. Hopefully the dash regulator did short "on" causing 12 volts instead of 5 ish through the gages.
Well, since you are not concerned about originality, I would go the 5.9 route because you will spend a lot more money trying to get the results of a stock 5.9 out of the 273. The other route would be something like a turbo /6 and that isn't cheap either.