Subaru may be referring to their own
rack crossbars, the ones with the convex arc. I don’t think they meant to state the capacity of a Yakima or Thule bar system clamped onto the factory rails. I would put that at AT LEAST 150, and maybe 200 with thoughtful loading.
Yes, the Outback rails are very strong.
There are certainly a lot of vehicles with weak factory rails, but Outbacks in the last dozen years have very strong rails.
It is on vehicles using the Q-tower and clip system, such as our '08 Accord, that one must be careful about using wide bars or going over 150 pounds. On boatertalk, there were several reports of Yakima Q-towers slipping and racks coming loose on Honda Civics. Using pad and clip systems, owners should consider clamping the front crossbar to the rear crossbar, which makes tower creep much less likely.
Watch out for that rack!
Thud! ouch, that rack! My wife walking arond the car in the dark.I use tennis balls. They don’t piss off the rackee as much as no protection.
Yeah, but…
…if you’re suffering from “altitude envy”, maybe those racks can deliver a little payback. 
Besides tennis balls, hanging streamers
from the ends of the racks will also help tall people, like me, who walk around too stooped to see the balls.
Would it help if I told you…
that on my old Jeep cherokee, I had 78 inch Yakama bars and had such a heavy load of treated lumber that I bent the bars.
Cheers,
jackL
wrong wrong wrong!!!
But your thinking is right. The law does not allow any load to extend beyond your PASSENGER’S SIDE MIRROR, but can extend past the driver’s side up to the legal width limit of 8’6". So if 78" crossbars are wider then the rear view mirrors, then they should be offset to the driver’s side.
This law is designed to protect pedestrians and cyclists.
worried about boats flying off?
when in doubt bow and stern tie downs are the answer. think about if you accidentally rear ended a family of 4 in a small car and the boat broke free of the rack and went through the rear window… that’s the kind of scenario i worry about with narrow cross bar spreads on factory mounted racks. having said that, i rarely use tie downs, and that’s because i have a very wide cross bar spread on a fully aftermarket Yakima rack set up, mounted directly into the vehicle. it’s a matter of probabilities…
tip over
many cars have low roof capacities NOT because of the roof rack strength but because of tip over stability.
raise the seat up in a yak and add a top heavy person and what do you get?
agreed on the too wide part and your sore head. use good tie down fore/aft and drive carefully.
steve (who commonly overloads his roof limit of 75lb SUV)
and thanks again, all . . .
for additional thoughts on tie-downs front and back, crutch tips vs. tennis balls, and legal width.
For interstate driving I usually (but not always) tie down the back as well as front – need to do it every time.
So wave if on July 16 you see a dark red Outback headed north up I-85/95 and carrying a green Old Town Osprey and a brown skin-on-frame kayak (properly tied down every which way). Yippee!!!
g in nc