So, bought a new rack damper bolt from the Pelican. After taking out the original, it was indeed the old, silver style, and the spring on the end was pretty easy to push in. That was my suspicion exactly.

I took the original out by using an offset 14mm S boxend wrench (HF has those) to loosen the locknut, then backed it out by hand. That said, that particular wrench was pretty much unusable in the adjustment/lockdown later.

Next, looked at the O-ring, which was fine, lubed it and placed it on the rack damper bolt after threading said bolt through the large locknut. I found you have to tighten the damper bolt quite a bit so that you can get it back into the hole without the bolt assembly hitting the oil cooler behind it. I then hand-tightened the whole assembly in, and began fiddling with the setting after starting the car. Mind you, the car was at operating temperature when doing this.

In order to do so, my brother cut off the ends of both a 14 and 12mm open end wrench, and we came at this FROM UNDERNEATH. Basically, right next to the oil cooler line that runs right by this area. It is still quite a sonuvagun to do, but...all of a sudden...after tightening...viola!, the car's idle starting leveling out and basically purring like a kitten, with very little engine wobble. The only problem was, at random points, the engine then would decide to rev-up a bit at odd moments, then back off to a normal idle. I suspected quite likely we had (have?) the bolt in too far, but as my bro said, probably a good idea to drive it a few days to see if it stays or if the spring loosens a bit on its own. Upon driving that day, it would kind of "hunt" a bit at idle, but not always. The last two days, however, it has behaved normally, with very good idle and little to no engine bay shaking.

Again, I may have to back that bolt off a bit if I get more random surges down the road, but for now, this has seemed to do the trick. YMMV.

Btw, it may be mere coincidence, but throttle response (always pretty good anyway) is better and the car seems to be smoking less than previous. Still goes black a bit when the throttle is hammered, but not as much as before.