Caepman

Over the past several months I have been considering the Kuat Vagabond basket mentioned by JMOSS5723 (info available through the last link he provides). As an alternative, I was also looking at getting two Rocky Mounts TieRod bike racks (not baskets) http://www.rockymounts.com/URLRewrite.asp?404;http://www.rockymounts.com:80/tierod_bike_rack_p/1012.htm and was thinking about mounting either the Vagabond basket or the two TieRod racks to the OEM rack on my '85 GL 4WD wagon. A co-worker asked me if my OEM rack was strong enough for this... This got me kind of concerned - the OEM roof rack is nowhere near as firmly mounted as the Thule towers, crossbars and racks my co-worker has. Anyone have any experience mounting either a basket or a couple of bike racks to an OEM rack? I'd prefer to avoid both the extra expense of purchasing extra aftermarket rack hardware (towers and crossbars) and removing my OEM rack, but I'm worried if the OEM crossbars will be able to support two mountain bikes (mostly urban/highway driving).

Have you seen this post about those clips? Read through the thread... on pg 2 Scooner's post shows a pic of how he "drilled and tapped 8/32 screw, used adhesive mounting tape and fender washers with nuts on the back side" (he includes a photo). The mouldings on my car were loose too; however, they were attached with Sikaflex adhesive, not clips. I removed the mouldings then re-attached them with 3M moulding tape - seems to be working well. Perhaps you could re-attach yours using moulding tape? For me, the most difficult part of the job was removing the old, dried out Sikaflex. I used an eraser wheel... you can read more about this here. Don't wait too long to deal with this... the previous owner of my '85 GL wagon let it go too long... the rear-most moulding on each side was missing when I purchased the car this past July. I'm looking to find replacements.

Hi Jeszek: Thanks for your reply and encouraging words! From reading the forums I was aware of how the light flashes can be used to determine error codes on an EA engine. I was looking online over the weekend to determine if there was a way to read the EA codes using a code reader, but I was not certain if our EAs were equipped for this. Like you, I try to do most of my own car repairs myself. My wife drives a 2005 Honda Odyssey van, and over the past few years I have considered purchasing a code reader to help out with maintenance/repairs on that vehicle. I believe a tool like that could both save money and help identify problems more quickly; however, the cost of these items makes it difficult to commit to purchasing one. When I read about the Bluetooth OBD and OBD II readers and their use with smart phone apps I thought this combination makes code reading technology much more affordable.This got me wondering if there might be an affordable similar type of gadget available for use with our EA engines. I also like the idea of using something like the Bluetooth code readers to expand the use of technology I already have (smart phone) by purchasing an inexpensive add-on instead of purchasing a more expensive single-purpose gadget (like a dedicated code reader) that costs more and will one day eventually become electronic waste. Admittedly, smart phones eventually will become waste too, but much of the technology they contain are being taken advantage of by creative people who are engineering new ways to use them. With this approach the amount of electronic waste can be reduced somewhat. Thanks again!

Hi Jeszek: Before I begin to try offering something that might help you out a bit, let me say a big thanks to you for everything you have posted on USMB. You do a great job presenting the vast amount of knowledge you have on the older Subarus. Like you, I have an '85 GL dual range wagon. I owned an '82 and an '83 (both GL dual range); however, I owned them back before the internet was widely used so USMB was not a resource for me when I owned them. I purchased my '85 this past July with 71,000 miles, and it is in great mechanical and cosmetic shape. It is suffering some minor hiccups from being 29 years old... I currently have the front axles out and have genuine Subaru remans on the way. Many of my dash lights are out - I will be replacing with LEDs, as per the instructions you provided. I am also planning to add a Bluetooth hands-free car kit to connect my smart phone to the Subaru OEM radio so I can take calls hands-free and listen to my MP3 files. Some of the more "elective" work may be on hold for awhile as I live in northwestern Ontario, Canada. As a result, the climate here is much colder than where you live. Winter has arrived and I don't have a garage - last week our morning temperatures were -23 Celcius with the windchill. Fortunately it has warmed up a bit this week, but this morning we had freezing rain and it took awhile to scrape the ice from my van windows. I hope the weather will not get cold again before I get a chance to get the reman axles in. About the OBD/OBD II systems... coincidentally, over the past weekend I started looking into this on my own - trying to explore options for reading codes on the old EA82s. In the process of doing this I got diverted to the OBD II readers and discovered there are code readers available that transmit the data via Bluetooth to an app that can be run on a smart phone that reports the output from the reader. There are plenty of YouTube videos available that discuss these - one that you might consider looking at is . These Bluetooth OBD analyzers are surprisingly inexpensive ($15 for the one in the YouTube video I referenced). The smart phone app used in the video is called Torque - you can find a free version on Google Play, and a Pro version is available for $4.95 (the person who put the video together mentions the PRO version might not be necessary). I expect there must be a version of this app or something similar available for iPhone and perhaps even Blackberry. This seems to be a much less expensive route compared to some of the dedicated analyzers I have seen and I will try to explore this further sometime. Hope this helps!

Trust me - Sikaflex is much more difficult to remove compared to 3M moulding adhesive tape. You want to go with the eraser wheel if you need to remove sikaflex. As I stated previously, solvents barely affected the twenty-nine year old, dried out sikaflex that was on my car. The eraser wheel allow you to use the energy of the electric drill it is chucked in, and it is less toxic to use! The eraser wheel removed the adhesive without affecting the finish of the paint - the same could not be said of all solvents.

Old post, but I have something to add (this is my first post... glad I can finally contribute something useful) that is very effective that I didn't see mentioned above! I purchased an '85 GL wagon 4WD this past July (my third... '82, '83, now '85). My wagon is missing the back-most body side mouldings - all that remains is the sikaflex adhesive that once fastened the mouldings to the car (no clips holding the mouldings on my car, as is discussed in some forum postings!). While the mouldings on all four doors remained on the car, each was loose and ready fo fall off. I carefully heated each door moulding with an electric paint stripper to remove them with the plan to re-attach each with 3M two-sided moulding tape. Being careful at doing this I avoided bubbling the paint. Before re-attaching the door mouldings I had to remove all of the sikaflex. I tried simple green, Goo-Gone, etc., but each of these had barely any effect on the dried-out sikaflex. The only thing that was effective was a razor blade, but it was difficult to use without damaging the paint. I searched the internet and learned about something called an eraser wheel (a.k.a. caramel wheel). This thing cost around $10 at our local auto paint/body store. It gets chucked in a drill and removed all of the Sikaflex in a timely manner with much less elbow grease compared to scrubbing with a cleanser/solvent. Furthermore, the eraser wheel is much less toxic and more environmentally friendly too! If anyone is interested, the best source of info I found on using an eraser wheel can be accessed here: