While investigating replacing harmonic balancer I found posts saying 'it is not a matter of if the harmonic balancer will break but when' A few weeks ago my mini stopped running. I smelled burning rubber and lost all power. Towed it home and found the serpentine belt was broken and shredded. Also discovered the crank pulley was broken in 2 pieces so it was spinning freely. Got everything replaced and all is well. Is this something that a breaks on many minis? If so when what is the average mileage? My Mini has 93K miles. Should the serpentine belt be replaced at specific intervals? Is it normal for this crank pulley to break? The car is very well taken care of,only driven in the summer and all maintenance done by Mini garage. Just curious if this is common. Thank you for your time. Sharlene

 

Serpentine belts are 50-60K, but it was the crank pulley that took yours out, not the other way around.


There are aftermarket crank pulleys that are not rubber mounted, those should theoretically last "forever"......

 

Common issue....
Typical miles....some go longer...some less.
Belt is (if stock) good for about 4 years/60,000 miles...less if a under drive pulley is on the sc.
Many have switched to an ATI or PRW branded non-OEM dampers...similar costs, but Better, longer lasting design.

 

Thank you for the info. First time anything has been wrong with our little guy lol

 

I understand the crank pulley failure is not uncommon, especially on higher mileage MINIs. One of our MTTS caravanners had hers fail on a high mileage R52 S (over 150k).

 

How does the ATI or PRW perform against the OEM? Same, better?

 

OEM uses a strip of rubber between two metal hoops to make a pulley....the rubber fatigues and fails from the heat, etc....
The aftermarket ones meet the same sfi spec's.... And seem to let's the cars idle smoother...
Heck...it seems that my car was running smoother with the ati when it was done. Both aftermarket units are fairly common design that are used in many cars that have similar issues......and the design does not have any of the weakness of the OEM, and the ati can be rebuilt.....