I have a 97,000 mile cooper s and just bought an alta cold air intake. I was looking into modding my car's performance further, but is it a bad idea? Should I not waste my money tuning and putting a sc pulley on it because I don't have much life left in my mini? I hear the supercharger dies around this time and that the pulley makes it die quicker...what do you think?

 

I did my pulley at 80 and I'm now at 103 and putting more parts on. But then again I'm a nutjob... No problems from the sc yet, and it read 15.4psi at he top of second gear and 10psi at 3k rpm, so I'm happy.

 

Pull the supercharger off and re-lube it, then it wont die. Makes it easy to do a pulley swap too.

 

Never too high for mods.

But seriously I've put supercharger pullies on higher mileage cars than yours. The highest being 140k. We have a great pulley package that will give you the right plugs and belt you need.
http://www.waymotorworks.com/wmw-pulley-package.html

 

Now that's a nice kit

 

At 117,000 and still moddin, just put an ATI 2% Overdrive Crank Pulley on! BEAST!

 

Miles are not always a good indicator of a motors condition...
Things like compression, oil consumption, etc are all also indicators!!
The SC is a wear item, and it will fail someday...but so is the motor itself, and the reduction pulley you put on can bectransfered to the new/rebuilt SC when/if it does go.
The way most SC go on other cars is due to low boost, or bearing/snout noise....the SC on the mini has a unique feature, a water pump drive (pto)...and the oil lubicrating thses gears leaks out, and it tends to fail...
The pulley should have no effect on this, since it is not caused due to rpm's of the SC!! Heck...the pulley might let you keep an aged lower boost producing SC in service longer in some cases....
So remember, just make sure the motor/car is overall in good condition to handle the extra power, and have fun!!

 

The higher the mileage, the more likely things are wearing out and in need of replacement (or that they will just fail spontaneously). This is the perfect opportunity for performance upgrades, since you have to replace stuff anyway. Just be aware that upgrading one thing might put extra stress on something else, leading to a chain of frequent parts failures.

And shame on you for suggesting that a car nearing 100,000 miles doesn't "have much life left"! My 1991 CRX Si has 350,000 miles on the original engine and tranny.