Apologies in advance, as this may be convoluted....

It's mot time and the car needed new ball-joints on both sides. Bought them and fitted them today...which went fine, only to find that when the car was lowered from the jack, the wheels were well out of alignment (pointing opposite ways).

Struggled to find what had gone awry, until I eventually removed the ball joints and compared them closer with the ones removed, only to find there was a small difference. The new ones, while sharing exactly the same geometry holes/fitting to the control arms, were slightly longer at the ball joint end.

I have checked over and again, and they are definitely the right part. The only thing I can think is that about 2 years ago I had 2 new after-market control arms fitted (TRW), and the ball joints were attached to them when they came. These were fitted by a relative mechanic, who tracked the car afterwards.

Could it be that the new ball joints are simply made to a newer pattern, but are within the tolerance of being tracked? (Or that the ones attached to the TRW control arms were crap and out of spec, but still within tracking parameters?).

Kind of at a loss of what to do...free re-test has to be by Wednesday. I have refitted the old ones for now so I can drive the car. I am loathed to order up another set of balljoints as they all look the same as the new ones online.

My feeling is that they should be able to be tracked on the new ones, but I have never experienced this situation before. Any advice appreciated! Thx.