So, long story short: I had to replace both lower ball joints because the guy doing the yearly road safety inspection on my car said they were both bad (after removing them I can’t say anything seems to be wrong with them but whatever).

Overall besides being a time-consuming slog that involved drilling away a bunch of rivets that really should have been bolts I’m now stuck on the very last step: Getting the pinch bolts back into place.

The ball joints are perfectly (or as perfectly as possible) aligned vertically but it still slightly blocks the pinch bolts (the same problem on both sides). I’m assuming this is because the after-market ball joints are not 100% to spec.

Any ideas on how to solve this? Hammering the bolts through is clearly not an option, attempting to force a 12 mm bolt through just ruins the threads (I’ve tried).