As I mentioned before, I bought brand new OEM '08 impreza/outback roofrack. Today I finally got around to installing it. Everything went extremely smooth until the point when I had to secure racks on my roof.
I spent about more than one hour between re-reading manual and re-trying to secure racks on the roof swearing and cursing those who engineers that. No matter what I did, I couldn't put bolt in. The bolts that hold roof racks appeared to be just 1 thread too short. Bolts are embedded inside plastic heads that keep racks. I did not know what to do. So I decided to go to Home Depot to get longer bolts and go from there.
On my way to home depot I stopped by my boss' place where my buddy figured second part of the puzzle, of why bolts are too short that is. Turned out that bolts aren't short at all. The two plastic washers that are sitting beneath bolts heads are the ones that made them too short. Having cut washers off, racks were mounted in few minutes.
So we came out with a conspiracy theory -- Subaru engineered this roof rack kit in such a way to make car owners go back to dealer to pay hourly rate to have them installed. I know, I know. It's too out there.
Another possible explanation would be that this roof rack works on various models and those plastic washers prevent bolt from going too deep into body, scratching paint etc. But why in the world not to mention that in instruction manual?