Decided to take my car to work and on the way back home, I heard some chirping like a loose belt. Didn't think anything of it, thinking that it was
probably the car next to me. Pulled into the garage, turned it off and noticed the belt was misaligned on the top pulley by one rib. NO biggie, I put some
slack from the tensioner and popped it back, started the car and it made the same chirp noise and belt skipped a rib again. I recalled a post where their crank pulley
was shot. Took the belt off and tested the pulleys and found this. For a 09 with only 50k miles, this is pretty disapointing. Ordered another OEM pulley, hopefully this one lasts
longer than the original one.

 

Stupid idea being stuck on

 

that's very disappointing indeed! My '03 has 43k miles on it but I've got a Fluidampr pulley to throw on whenever I have some free time just in case.

 

Those failures are very rare, Honda has been using the same design for decades without much issue. They have a rubber section sandwiched to reduce vibration, some say it is a good idea others say it isn't necessary. Glad you found the issue in a timely manner.

 

Rubber eventually degrades. Maybe oil got spilled on it at one point, and didn't get cleaned off, sat there leading to premature demise.

 

Good for vibration , just pity a fail safe wasn't engineered into the design.

 

Maybe a lot of honda folks are not as used to seeing them, but super common damper pulley design used on cars across all brands. Also super reliable and has been used for decades. You unfortunately either had one with a defect, or it has had oil on it and degraded the rubber. I have had a car where the rubber started degrading one a harmonic damper pulley, but it was after a front main seal failure which saturated it with oil. But most times they work just fine, so I would expect the replacement to last as long as the rest of the car.

And in regards to "Fail safe" the only fail safe for this failure would be a hard connection between the outer ring and the center, which would remove the effectiveness of the rubber damper material in the pulley.

 

Couple of thin metal plates screwed on inner and outer would stop it falling off<after it failed>and it would not loose the damping effect.
Understand the need for them, i know the B series will destroy itself without them.My BMW also has them<and have seen failures>

 

Any metal connecting the inner and outer ring will reduce the damping effect to some degree. To prevent it from coming completely apart it would have to be substantial enough to transfer a lot of vibration. That is the purpose of having a soft connection between them. It is not unheard of them to fail, but not common and many times oil exposure causes it to degrade. Again, not impossible for them to fail of course but not an unreliable design either. OP may have just been unlucky in that theirs failed prematurely. Some have been damaged as well by someone trying incorrect ways of removing them when they are stuck on the shaft too. Hard to say really but going back with a stock one should be fine.

 

My old LS3 Corvette and 335d BMW (E90) both had the same harmonic balancer failure. The Corvette before me was the typical Sunday driver that got oil changes every year despite only having 2-3 thousand miles a year TOPS and original 2009 tires when I bought it in 2015 with 26k for a 2009.
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The 335d however was someone's highway cruiser with 200k miles, oil leaks, and needed some major work.

Both were the original dampener and both were replaced with aftermarket ones. It's just something that can happen to any car. Throw a new one on or an aftermarket one and enjoy!