four-fleet-feet Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 I have a 97 Impreza Wagon, and I've had all sorts of trouble getting an ancient 1987 Yakima GT upright bike mount to fit on my car! It's the same as the now-discontinued Lockjaw save it has no lock core in the red lever. Yakima has sent me washers for the 14H Mighty Mounts - twice. I've tried every solution they give me (five people in NINE calls so far) and still no joy. I can't get the hoop base plate far enough to the back of the tire channel to get a grip on my downtube in my usual location (under the water bottle mount). I can pull it further into the center of the tire channel, but then I don't have space to lock my rear wheel down, and then the tire channel interferes with the rear hatch. Yakima states this car needs the bike to be reversed on the roof. Anyone put their bikes on upright and facing forward? If I keep it where it is (the place I always used it on my last 2 vehicles) I don't have any space to get the front wheel lever down to lock the front wheel - the lever ends up right over the factory crossbar, which on the 97 is W-I-D-E. If the wheels aren't locked, the bike's unstable. The lever can't be replaced, and it's over three inches long. The clearance for the lever is only 1 1/2" or so to the fac crossbar. If I had round bars on this car I would have been done a long time ago. If there was a bracket to put Yakima round bars on this car Subaru seems to be unable to find the info. If there ever was one made by them for Subaru, Yakima doesn't know about it. Q 46 clips are not an option for this car, so Yakima tells me; although they fit other Imprezas, NOT the 1997. Last resort Yakima told me was to move the factory crossbars (they're at max spread for a Basketcase). Well, I've sprayed WD-40 and Liquid Wrench on all the screws, finally got them to turn (I don't think they've been undone since Dragon was with her first owner!), but the dang brackets holding the crossbars won't move a fraction. Aircraft-engineer mentioned I might have stripped the mounting plate behind the black bracket (if there is one, it can't be seen). Has anyone ever gotten a 96-98 Imp crossbar to come off? Any pictures? Advice? I'm at wit's end here, and now all I want to do is get my vintage Trek on my roof and go home... it was 115 in Phoenix today. Please help a melting Washingtonian get home before she dehydrates into some really TOUGH human jerky! (I'm already pretty well-seasoned, I've been using a lot of salty language messing with this rack...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idosubaru Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 well we use a 4 bike hitch rack rather than roof type so i can't really help. but here's some experiences... i had two OBS parts cars and couldn't get any of the screws out on any of the roof rack/cross bars. those screws seemed welded in place, i would have had to drill them out to remove the bars as far as i know. but i just left them, didn't need them anyway. we easily fit two bikes in the rear hatch of our OBS, is that a last resort for you if you're at the end of your rope? or remove the pedals and just ratchet the dang things to the roof rack and figure it out later when you're not as pressured? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bucky92 Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 I dont have a Yakima but a Thule...and we had to do some slight mods to make it work on my 08 Imppy..Fabricated our own rear bracket and slid the whole unit forward. I have the Thule Sidearm which locks on the front wheel and nothing touched the frame of the bike. Here is a pick of how we slid the unit forward. Dont know if it will help you any with the Yakima but it might give you some ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kami333 Posted June 22, 2008 Share Posted June 22, 2008 Has anyone ever gotten a 96-98 Imp crossbar to come off? Any pictures? Advice? I'm at wit's end here, and now all I want to do is get my vintage Trek on my roof and go home... it was 115 in Phoenix today. Nope, I don't think anyone has unless they did it in the first few months. The problem is that the nuts are very weakly welded into the rails (they aren't adjustable), any rust and when you turn the bolt the nut gets ripped off and they start to turn freely. Depending on whether you want to use the stock crossbars anymore or not, you can either cut off the plastic brackets with a dremel (faster) or cut a hole in the bottom of the rails and use needlenose pliers to hold the nuts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
four-fleet-feet Posted June 22, 2008 Author Share Posted June 22, 2008 Boo. Rats. Dang it!!! Kami333, you said what I was afraid of. Bucky92, your Imp is newer than mine; AFAIK, even Thule doesn't have a solution for this particular Imp. I have round-to-square adapters, but if I can't get a Thule to fit, either, I guess I'm hosed. Grossgary, believe me, if I had the room the bike would be inside the car. But there's a lot of things Mom states either I take home to WA or she finds a new home for... and since some of it's Aircraft-engineer's, it's two against one and the bike won't fit inside. I thought about strapping it onto the Basketcase, until I discovered a Rivendell Atlantis long-distance tourer with the same manufacturing angles and size (I use a teeny 49cm frame) is $1500 for the frame and another $2500 for the parts to build it out to rideable. If my Trek comes off the roof it's going to co$t me a lot to replace it. At that price I could buy a second Dragon and have enough left over for airfare to Disneyland or a six-month Seattle bus pass! So I think I'm going to think about making the rack fit any way, any how. I like my 26 year old Trek (and the price is right)! Hey, I don't need two cars... Thanks for all the replies. (Grabs wrench in desperation and stomps back out to the carport... where it's 108 in the shade ) For all those smart-alecks who are thinking of saying 'but it's a dry heat' right now, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idosubaru Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 ha, ha dry heat! can you just strap something to the top? i've strapped lots of crazy things on highway trips on the top of my roofrack - ladders, boards, etc. get something flat, with the right set up and ratchet straps they're not going anywhere. yeah it won't look cool but hey, does the job. maybe even just ratchet strap other stuff that's inside on top...get a rubber maid tub or something similar, fill it up with stuff inside, ratchet the gonads out of it, then put the bikes inside? break the bikes down....take the pedals off, wheels off.....would that help at all? there's enough options that something would work...though it may not be ideal. buy a receiver and hitch mounted rack? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdjdc Posted June 23, 2008 Share Posted June 23, 2008 Does the impreza have the raised side rails like the outback? By this I mean the rails that the cross bars are attached to, do they run from front to back and are raised above the roof. If so, you can use a set of lowrider towers to attach the yakima round bars. They are a bit pricey, but they work great and can be found on ebay all the time. You can also find them called doublecross towers. These are just the older models and function the same way ans the low riders. Good luck If you can send me a pisture of your current setup I may be able to help you figure out a solution. mdjdc1@gmail.com Good Luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charm Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 Although Yakima does not make feet for the '97 Imp, they do make feet that fit. I wish I could find a stamp on the feet to tell you what they are. I bought them about 5 years ago so I don't recall exactly, but I think they're made for some model of Jeep. They fit well enough. These might be the Q-clips, but I'm not sure. The fight are designed to slide on and off of clips more permanently fastened to an existing rack. The trick is, the angle has to be right. In this case it's really close but not perfect. Close enough that to get the front bar on, you need to loosen the allen head screw that clamps the cross bar to the feet a little so it will wiggle just a tad. Then, once on, you tighten the screw. The rear goes on without loosening anything. Works great! I stand corrected, there is a stamp on the bottom and it's real hard to read. I think it says... PA66-GF14 They're for sale along with the rest of the rack...but you might be bidding against somebody else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
four-fleet-feet Posted June 24, 2008 Author Share Posted June 24, 2008 Charm, I think you know Aircraft-Engineer... he's my brother and he bought his Imp from you. I've already had at him for not buying your rack with the car! How soon he forgets all the times he used my S-10 and its ever-so-convenient Yakima attachments on my GemTop! I was already in Arizona or... Wish I was already home so I could take a look-see. Oh well, not any time soon, it seems. I'll be lucky if I get out of here before Labor Day, at this rate. Thanks for the part number; now time to again email Yakima (the phone help isn't getting me anywhere, will try the email department) and see if they can identify it. I love my Dragon, but if I'd known some of my also-beloved Yakima stuff wouldn't go on the 1997 year Impreza (maybe no GT and definitely no RocketBox- -sob) I'd have looked for a 96. (Yeah, I know, no RocketBox on the 1996, either... boo hiss...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charm Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 I told him what I wanted for it, he never responded. With this set up, all of those things will fit on the car. The bars sit a little higher than the stock cross bars. I had originally bought the rack so that I could carry a small sailboat on the roof (which I never got around to buying). I got lucky when I went in to the car rack store in Portland, Or. I got a saleman who was, um, creative. He had seen it done on another 97 Imp and had remembered it. I thought it was widely known that this would work until I started reading the board here. Seems this guy knew something unique, something a lot of other owners would have loved to have known. I'll still take $200 for it with a nice assortment of attachements...but I don't want to even think about what it would take to ship something shaped like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zefy Posted June 24, 2008 Share Posted June 24, 2008 yakima is on crack if they said there was no fit solution for the factory rack. there is a track that is on the top right? with a groove in it? it would use yakima control towers or thule 430's. the 430's would be TK2's i believe. yakima i'm not sure however i can check tomorrow... it is fine to run bikeracks backwards as long as you can get past the fact that your bikes are going the wrong direction. (completely safe to do) bucky, technically what you need is an xadaptor kit. however if you've already worked out a solution than good, however if you want it done properly (or 'the thule way') and maintain that lifetime warranty you should look into getting it. OP, get yourself to rackattack. either make your way up to canada and check out the location i work at or head to the portland location on your next roadtrip or whatever... we can set it all up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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