Yes. A control arm's mounting position directly sets your vehicle's camber and caster angles (and on some suspension designs, toe as well), so anything that removes and reinstalls a control arm has the potential to shift those angles — even when everything goes back exactly where the old arm was.
That last part is worth being precise about: even a textbook-perfect reinstall can still throw off alignment, because a new bushing and new ball joint are stiffer and tighter than the worn ones you just removed. That difference in stiffness is enough to produce a small but real shift in the resting angle of the suspension, independent of whether the mounting bolt went back into the exact same hole.
What to Do After the Job
- Torque the mounting bolts with the suspension loaded, not hanging. Control arm bushing bolts need to be tightened with the vehicle's weight on the suspension — wheels on the ground, or a jack supporting the knuckle to simulate ride height. Torquing them while the suspension hangs free on a lift twists the new bushing under a preload it was never designed for, and that damage often shows up as premature bushing failure down the road.
- Inspect the parts around the arm. Ball joint, tie rods, sway bar links, and the opposite-side control arm are all worth a quick check while you're already in there.
- Get the alignment done after all suspension work is finished — not before, and not skipped. If you have to drive the vehicle to an alignment shop, keep speeds low; misaligned wheels scrub the tires unevenly the whole way there.
- Ask for the before/after alignment printout and confirm camber, caster, and toe all landed within factory specification.
There are narrow cases where a shop might skip a full alignment — certain repairs that don't touch adjustable geometry, or a manufacturer spec that doesn't call for one. But there's no reliable, specific list of those exceptions in the data available for this article, and treating "probably fine" as a substitute for an actual alignment check is a bad bet against tire wear and steering pull. Default to getting it checked.
Related reading: Should You Replace Just the Control Arm Bushing, or the Whole Arm? · Do You Need to Replace the Ball Joint When Replacing a Control Arm?
