I'd be willing to bet that if you looked hard enough you'd be able to find evidence of near-critical wear long before the part actually broke. Also, if a car isn't capable of redlining, I call that car "broken"

That pulley is prone to wear on all DE models, newer DE motors it's still there but it's just a blank pulley that some folks have deleted. I replaced mine two years ago when I noticed it was making a little noise.

While sudden catastrophic failures to happen things like that part usually make a lot of noise for 100k miles before they finally sieze or shatter.

Totally agree about the redline comment.