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Harmonic balancers are pretty robust as long as you dont let a front seal leak or coolant leak saturate the rubber part between the inner and outer iron parts of the balancer. When we found one that was bad we just put a used one on since it was easy to see if the rubber part had been oil (or coolant) contaminated.
I have seen them come apart, also seen them with the belts holding them together. You could pull the outer part off after removing the belts, made a h##$% of a racket.
I would tend to agree that they are a "life of the vehicle" part without contamination affecting them. You might wear one out in 400+K miles since there is some flesing that is absorbed by the rubber. V12 BMWs being inherintely balanced do not have a harmonic balancer. I have not worked on enough 3 cylinder cars to see if that number of cylinders would affect longevity.
regards
Mech
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