Here are the cliff notes:

Took my car to a shop for an oil change

Asked to have a strut bar installed while it was there because I didn't have the deep socket necessary to do it

They looked at it and told me it'd be 30 bucks, so I said hell no, I'll do it myself

After my oil change but before I did the install, I started to hear a clicking/popping/metal grinding metal sound coming from my front driver side strut but couldn't figure out the problem

Installed my strut bar and noticed two nuts were lose on that very strut. Thought that by installing the bar and tightening these nuts, it'd eliminate the awful sound

Nope. It keeps coming back, no matter how I try to tighten the nuts (jack up car, use lock washers, etc)

Is my problem that I'm just not getting the nuts tight because the strut/bolts are binding and not in full contact when I'm working on it? Or can there be a whole other issue that has nothing to do with these nuts?

Help!

 

You sure its not your exhaust? My exhaust (stock) rattles some times. I thought it was the front of my car but it wasn't

 

i have no idea what this could be but i hope you figure it out and ill be keeping an eye out for this post to see the outcome. gl and i hope it gets fixed.

 

nah its certainly coming from the area of my drivers side front wheel, whether my coilovers are going out or I just can't get that connection tight... i'm almost sure its a suspension problem

 

I think the threads are stripped for the two bolts. Its kinda easy actually to strip a thread on that. Do this, take off the K-bar and try to tighten the bolts. i dont think that those two will tighten.

What causes that is if you dont have the bolt on level with the threads when you go to tighten it.

Maybe they took of the strut bolts just to examine how easy it was going to be but were careless when putting them back on. Examine the threads and attempt to straighten them.