Bad Ball joint?

I noticed today that the passenger side lower ball joint is angled towards
the rear of the car and quite rusty.
The ball joint on the driver's side is angled towards the front of the car
and looks new. The car is parked level inn my garage. This is a new 2007
ION.3 with only 3,000 miles.

Two months ago, the right side of my car ran into a hole where almost a foot
of pavement was broken off from the road. It wasted my front and rear rims
on the passenger side. The shop replaced both rims, said they inspected the
front end and all four tires and found nothing else wrong.

Since then, I have been experiencing a shimmy in the steering wheel when I
begin to turn it at around 50mph. Last week, I had the car inspected again
and they said everything was A-OK. At my insistence, they rebalanced my
wheels and checked the alignment.

That did little to help, if anything, it made the shimmy smoother but it
didn't disappear. It definitely doesn't feel like a brand new ION. Other
than the shimmy, the car rides in a straight line and does not emit any
noises from the front end when turning the wheel.

After Googleing Ball Joint I read that it could cause all sorts of anomalies
and I'm now thinking that the ball joint on the passenger side should be
angled similarly with the drivers side ball joint, not opposite and
definitely should not be covered in rust!

 

Given your observations, I would have the ball joint inspected more closely.
One would think that if the alignment was checked and something was bent out
of line, it would show up as an alignment issue (unless they just did the
customary "toe 'n go" instead of a full toe, caster & camber check). Since
the lower ball joint is a 'criticality 1' item*, don't take chances.
NOT fun when a lower ball joint fails at highway speeds!

I wouldn't worry about surface rust on the ball joint. What does matter is
the tightness of the ball joint itself and the joint to steering knuckle
connection.
Oppie

*criticality 1: Term used in the aerospace industry to indicate an assembly
that if it were to fail would be catastophic to the mission. ie make a
boo-boo face and wave bye-bye.