taking out the UCA will not mess up your alignment, Ive already had to change out my UCA a few times, due to not listening to people on here, I am a victim of Ebay, I killed the UCA balljoints in 2 months, changed them and it did the same thing again, now I have TRW UCA's and its time to change the driver side again (im very rough on the ball joints, hopping the front end the range of angles I punish the balljoints with, since I can articulate the ball joint end to end from the bag setup)