Cow Catcher Bracket – Diving Board Tuck (Left) – FFF

Diving Boards are Back in! Well, ok, we’re not sure if they were ever “in” to begin with, but over the past 30+ years they’ve finally earned themselves a following of appreciators, yours truly included.

But if we’re being completely honest, they just don’t have quite the sleek finesse of the Euro bumpers or the sophisticated modern look of the “Series 2” plastic bumper cover treatment. However, if you know anything about the E30 Series 1 Diving Board bumper, you know that there is a little DIY trick that can actually get people to think you’re rocking the Euro bumps if they have a few beers in them… The infamous Bumper Tuck.

This is a neat (and free) little trick you can perform to freshen up the look of your aluminum-bumpered saloon, but there’s one little catch. Oh it reduces impact protection? OK so there are two little catches… As much as we pride ourselves in being eagle-eyed detail hawks here at E30 Update, someone actually had to point out this little detail to us at “The Vintage 2022“; when you tuck a diving board, it actually creates a substantially larger gap between the air dam and the cast aluminum impact protection feature.

Then one day, while the E30 Update 1986 325es was on jack stands for repairs the idea struck: What if we redesigned the cow catcher brackets to compensate for that ~15mm gap that the tucked bumper creates? So we did!

Over a hundred man-hours and numerous prototypes later, we think we have the world’s first cow catcher brackets designed specifically for the well-documented Diving Board Bumper Tuck job. It’s not a major deal, sure, but when you see the before-and-after there is a difference. When you bolt these brackets on it truly makes the “bumper tuck” shine and look original. Set your ride apart with the exclusive E30 Update cow catcher bracket for the diving board tuck club! And when they ask you if those are the euro bumpers, just say “Yeah”! Or, you know, tell them about our brackets.