Gates K060535 Micro-V Serpentine Drive Belt

Good quality

If you do the 17% pulley reduction upgrade this works!

Doing a super charger pulley mod on a Mini Cooper R53 is the best performance upgrade one can do for instant gratification! I found the Gates belt to fit perfectly and holds up pretty well after 20k +. * Just a note of advice; You may want to seriously consider installing a good new belt tensioner in addition to changing the super charger fluid while/before installing the new pulley.

This is the belt I installed for a 2006 Mini Cooper S with a 15% pulley reduction. It's tight, but it's the correct belt. Don't forget your belt tensioner tool (link below) if you don't have one already. Don't want to try and do this without one! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H9Y6D7Y ($40 at the time of this review and well worth it.)

Must use smaller belt in case you have reduced super charger pulley. I learned the lesson the hard way. Couple of years ago I had Randy Webb did the 15% reduction in one of the "pulley party", good old days. Last year I replaced a new belt around 80K, using the standard fitting guide, without thinking too much about it. When the milage approaching 110K, I noticed the engine started to shake, it's getting worse in reverse gear. One day while driving on a local road, all of sudden the battery light came on, weird, the battery was replaced couple of month ago. AC didn't work, it also appeared to lose some power. Hmmmm, I pulled over and open the hood, to my horror the belt wasn't spinning! I tool a look at the engine, and noticed the harmonic balancer was not rotating. So I stopped the engine, tried to rotate the balancer by hand, and saw it broke into two pieces, thus the engine wasn't actually drive the belt! It's a well known fact that factory balancer had some design/material issue, it's about time. So I bite the bullet, ordered popular "Super Damper" balancer, due to rave review. However the shaking didn't go away, what the hell! I took a closer look at the belt, and noticed the section between balancer and AC was bouncing pretty bad. A light bulb came off, the OEM belt was loose due to the reduced super charger pulley. I shouldn't follow the official fitting guide. Just installed the new belt, since it's shorter, I had to pull the tensioner more, from first the hole to the second hole, otherwise there is no way to mount the shorter belt. If you struggle with tight belt, remember that. With the new belt, the shaking was finally gone.