Roof rack on my 1990 legacy

I have a 1990 legacy L sedan, I want a roof rack for it. Would I be able to take one from a legacy wagon and put it on by drilling holes in the roof? Or should I just spend $150 on yakima Q-towers? I want to put a basket on it and attach some foglights to it too so I need to stay low-priced.

Do you have a legacy wagon roof rack already? I don't know if it will fit or not, but a buddy of mine just took a roof rack off a touring wagon and said that it will fit his 84 GL, fwiw. Drilling the holes and bolting it on is easy enough. I had to replace some rack bolts on my second gen and it was a piece of cake. I just had to take a few pieces of interior trim off and pull the headliner out of the way.

I don't already have it, but I have one removed from a wagon in a junkyard 5 minutes from my house so all I'd have to do is pick it up. And I think it will fit because of how far back it is on the wagon.

The brackets underneath are going to be the hardest part.

I dont know if the older ones had them though. I pulled mine

off of a second gen so I'm not sure if it'll fit my car or not.

It seems to just be 8 screws, I already took it off so it's not hard at all, I could just find the same size bolt and bolt it onto the roof and secure it on the inside when I take off the headliner

I just took one of the bolts to the auto parts store and found some matching nuts. Then I used some toothed or serrated washers which made it a bit easier to tighten everything. And you don't even have to totally remove the headliner. I just took off the interior trim pieces and was able to squeeze my hand up there holding the nut and washers.

They dont have those metal brackets on the

ceiling of the old ones for the bars to bolt to?

It's so easy dude you just take it off in like 5 minutes no brackets. I'll let you guys know how it turns out because I'm going back home today from vacation

Dang. The new ones have brackets. I wonder if I

even need to put the brackets from the new one

on my old Legacy then haha And roof racks are

pretty sweet. I threw and old Schwinn up on the

top of my green wagon last night

I didn't know you had a green wagon.

Yeeeeaaaah boooiiiii!

 

Got it a few months ago. I like it

Little 5 speed AWD one. It's got 220

on the cluster and drives better than

I'd expect anything with that many miles

on it to drive I may have a picture.

 

Turns out I only had crappy cell phone

pictures haha

 

I haven't done much exterior-wise. I pulled

the engine, replaced all the seals, changed

all the fluids and stuff...maintenance. The

only things I've done other than that were

painting the rims and painting/installing a

turbo grille on it. You can see my experiment

in the picture of trying to make it more like the

turbo grille, before I realized that the turbo grill

was different than the normal one haha

 

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v195/TetsuoShima/Photo04101913.jpg

 

 

This was when I repainted the rims before

the trip to Georgia.I guess I've had it since

April or the beginning of May, but have no real

pictures lol Sad.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v195/TetsuoShima/Photo05231822.jpg

Edited July 12, 2012 by Legacy Wagon

Thats nice. and you are very very very very fortunate to not have the front fenders rusted down by the mudflaps and doors. That's been my biggest pain since I got the car. Also, I figured out that the roof rack from a wagon WILL NOT fit on the sedan, it is too long and goes over the windshield/rear window. Guess I'll just have to buy Yakima Q-towers

Dang. Can you cut the rails to length and get them to fit?

Thats nice. and you are very very very very fortunate to not have the front fenders rusted down by the mudflaps and doors. That's been my biggest pain since I got the car. Also, I figured out that the roof rack from a wagon WILL NOT fit on the sedan, it is too long and goes over the windshield/rear window. Guess I'll just have to buy Yakima Q-towers

Gracias Needs repainted.

My other one has the really bad rust

at the rear of the driver fender. Almost

gone. Cant even put the mudflaps on it.

 

That's a shame :/ What year did you buy

them from? I think the newer cars have

longer roof racks.

Hi, I'm bumping this up because I have a 1990 as well. It's an L Wagon without a rack. I'm confused by this thread because everyone is talking about the wagon rack like it exists, but I don't have one, or any discernible way to install one. Curious what my options are!

 

Thank you.

I have seen them in person so they do exist. The problem is first gens are become increasingly rare so good luck finding a stock roof rack to install. There are plenty of options for you though. I don't know where you live but in SLC where I live there are rack install shops that can fit racks to any car.

 

Also Yakima, Thule, etc. make universal roof racks. For example: https://www.rackwarehouse.com/yakima-subaru-loyale-wagon-skyline-jetstream-rack.html