Excessive play in steering wheel

The V8 torsion bars are larger diameter and thus stiffer, so you should look into changing them if this is a street driven machine. If I was going to change the T-bars, then I would read up on what others are using in the various threads here, but if on a budget, then at least find some T-bars from a V8 car. (Your car presumably has /6 t-bars, and if you are purely drag racing, they would actually be desirable, but not for street driving.)

The rest of the parts should not change. Doing all of this when the engine is out might make it a bit easier, but that is not necessary. I would actually do the steering and suspension BEFORE changing so you can get any issues sorted out and not be fighting them at the same time as sorting our a new engine installation.

And as far as the suspension overall, read up a lot on this subforum. It is like everything else, you can go on and on with upgrades..... and the associated costs!

Oh yeah, add wheel bearings on your list of things to inspect/replace. If you need to take this to a shop for this work to be done, then you can expect many, many hundreds of $$ for a full rebuild; it is not hard but is a fair amount of labor time. At least down there in Cleveland in east TN, the chances of finding an old school mechanic who knows this stuff is a lot better than most areas of the country.