b.obsdian | b.orginal

I have been driving the WRX a lot more, and noticed I picked up a leak in my trunk after a rainy road trip.

Initially, the leak was caused by a spoiler/wing swap (more on that in another post), but I patched that up only to find that my trunk was still leaking. The mounts around the wing bolts were still dry.

It turns out, my tail light gaskets finally started leaking. They’ve been torn up and hanging on for a few years now, but the problem was out of sight, out of mind, so I forgot about it. Subaru still sells the gaskets, but they are sold individually, and I didn’t want to wait for a dealer to ship them out. Sometimes the dealers ship quickly, and other times they take their sweet ass time. Flatirons Tuning sells RCM Tail Light Gaskets in a pair, and I know they will ship them out ASAP. And they are cheaper than OEM!

The RCM packing is nice for a couple of neoprene gaskets. Although they smell terrible, lol.

Removing the tail lights is pretty easy. There are four 8mm nuts holding the tail light in place. One on each “side” of the opening. Disconnect the white clip to remove the tail light housing with the bulbs in place.

I did have to remove the OEM gasket, which was partially stuck on the car and the tail lights. It took some time to clean up and remove all the gasket material with some soap and water and a plastic razor.

Now, all clean!

The RCM gaskets are side agnostic. I think the OEM gaskets might be side-specific.

The gaskets are thicker than OEM, and do require more effort to cinch down. I was a little worried there would be some misalignment, but they eventually compress enough to avoid any issues.

It hasn’t rained yet, but I am pretty confident these will solve the leak issue around the tail lights. I will update if there are any issues!

Cheers!