[Z K]

I wanted to write a quick review on the Project Mu Euro Sports Excellence pads. This is a new product from Project Mu that is produced for the Japanese domestic market. I have not seen it for sale outside of Japan yet.

Background

I was looking for increased braking performance without any drawbacks for street use. My 328i is equipped with the US base brakes and pads. These pads have very low dust but they also have very low bite and fade very quickly. I have increased the performance of every other aspect of the car - BM3 tune, upgraded OEM M sport springs, 400M wheels with 245/40 squared Michelin PS4S tires. With the increased power, handling and grip, the stock pads were not having a good time. Just pressing the brakes to slow down from triple digits once would cause the brakes to fade and it felt like the car would not stop. It was time to fix that.

Research

My other car is a M3 that I take to the track pretty regularly. I usually run Project Mu track oriented pads and they were working great.

- I looked at the P337A pads that came on the stock M sport brakes without brembo calipers as a cheap upgrade but reviews said it dusted a lot. This is the OEM pad compound for all European 3 series and the pads on stock grey Brembo calipers. I wanted something slightly more than OEM stock.
- I looked at the Hawk HPS 5.0 but there were a lot of mixed reviews and no one mentioned it having a high heat range.
- I had run Cool Carbon before and they were ok on the street but terrible on track - they chunk apart when hot. They also had very low bite at cold temperatures.
- Project Mu HC+/CS and Endless MX72 were out as those are more track oriented and dust up and make noise on the street occasionally. They need to be "warmed up" before they work well. I run these on my street/track car that is more track than street but I did not want to daily these.
- Ferodo DS2500 is an old compound. They dust a lot,squeal occasionally and not much torque when cold. Similar heat range to Euro Sports Excellence.

While searching for Project Mu pads on their Japanese site, I saw a press release regarding the Euro Sports Excellence pads. These were replacing their normal Euro Sports pads. The Euro Sports had a higher heat range (up to 650c) and seemed more like a MX72 competitor. The Excellence was from 0-500c range (max 932 degrees F). They advertised it for "street sports" and has low dust and no noise. High cold braking torque while being easy on rotors and pad wear. Seemed like the perfect pad for performance street use with little draw backs.

Ordering

Since these pads are not available in the USA, I found some Japanese sellers that were willing to ship to the USA. This skips the US distributors and the turn around is super fast. I previously ordered pads from the US and special order pads took up to 1/2 a year to get... I didn't want to wait. After ordering, I received my pads in 1 week - straight from Japan! Shipping costs were a bit high for international air mail but having it so fast is nice. Plus most Japanese sellers price brake pads under MSRP.

First Impressions

I've installed brake pads on sliding caliper BMWs dozens of times. (going to the track means you service brakes a lot). The F30 is no different. 1 hour later, the pads were in. The pads were very well packaged and comes with anti-noise shims installed. If it wasn't green colored, the design could pass as OEM brakes. These shims seemed soft and cushioned so I installed it without brake pad paste.

On my 1st drive, I was floored with the high torque of these pads. Coming from the no bite OEM pads, just a light pedal press felt like you were going to fly through the windshield. 0.45 mu from cold brakes is no joke. I did a few 30-0 bedding runs. I didn't want to go higher speed because it is a street pad and I didn't want to glaze my rotors and pads. The pads were completely silent and had a firm pedal that felt comfortable and easy to modulate. So far so good! I'll keep an eye on brake dust.

Coming from the terrible OEM no dust/no bite pads I think any brake pad upgrade would make a difference but I'm pretty impressed.

Competitors?

I don't know what would be this pad's competitors. I think the closest may be a DS2500 because they have similar heat ranges but this pad has less dust and noise and more bite when cold. Endless has a "Premium Compound" and "Super Street M-sports PLUS" this is probably the closest competitor in the Japanese market. Stoptech Street Performance pads also have similar heat range but it has less torque when cold and also less desirable noise and dust characteristics. Hawk's range of street pads such as HPS can't handle the same high heat range nor has the high braking torque from cold.

Conclusion

Just wanted give a review on these pads and let people know there is a good new street performance pad on the market. I imagine this will be available from US sellers soon. Otherwise you can order them from overseas. They make these pads for every European car application.

This is definitely a street pad - I would not expect this to hold up for track days. I imagine it would do well for a few laps maybe but not a full day of lapping. It would probably be perfect for some spirited mountain pass drives for a car that sees daily commuting without any drawbacks to daily use (no noise, low dust, high cold bite etc).

[Z K]

Little update. Decided to replace the rotors as well because I had some hot spotting from the stock brake pads on the stock rotors. I also didn't like the surface rust so I got a set of electrophoretic coated rotors. $80 for the pair so it was not very pricey.

Have to break it in again now since there's new rotors with the pads.

Brake dust is very minimal so far. 2 weeks of daily driving and there is just a mild grey dust on the wheels. You can't tell it is dust unless you ran your finger on the wheel. This grey dust could also just be rotor wear as they break in. Braking torque is more normal now that the pad is wearing in. No more "fly through the windshield" on cold brakes. Still much stronger than stock and more predictable now.