Crankshaft Pulley she's a gonna..or ride her till she goes bang?

Well...I've been worried about my pulley since reading up on the vulcanisation issue back in 2016. Doing the serpentine belt kit pulleys etc at the mo and think...well I've got the front off shall I put a new crankshaft pulley or not???
I've read the nightmare stories and the not so bad ones of the pulley just failing as your getting home etc... bad would be it goes and damages something else..good would be I get some indication (wobble, vibrate sound etc) and then I put a new one in... I could still have 10k miles left with the current one and my mileage is only 3k odd per year so why change it early! Save the cash instead ‍..

I know many have gone early 70-100k miles... B5nuts lasted 200k! Mine is an 08 plate 3.0 on 175k, still the original crank pulley tensioner and belt so it seems...funny thing is the tensioner and belt appear to be great condition but I'm changing them anyway.

I've got a couple of pics... just need to shrink them first.

Btw...I haven't noticed any noises with the crank pulley when running and I've given it a tug...it appears well in place..rubbery .. and not hard..

Here it is... I've pushed the flathead screwdriver up so you can see how far the rust goes.

If you guys think it's best to change... has anyone had good experiences with aftermarket pulleys? There's a guy selling Crank technics and Topran but from what I've read they're hit n miss... but for 120 someone is selling supposedly Oem pulley on eBay...in the regular VW/Audi packaging etc with part number.

Lastly folks...when I spoke with TPS and quoted the part number I've got
059 105 251 AD the chap said it's been superseded by same number ending in DJ instead. Does anyone know the difference?
The vw/Audi part on eBay is an AD one.

Maybe some of you think it's better to just drive till it breaks..I rarely go over 2k rpms...yeah I'm not old, I just like cruising . With a new baby the cash saved would come in handy...but also I wouldn't wanna be waiting for a recovery truck with a poor little screaming baby!!!

Yeah... I knew you'd say that along with everyone else! It just feels like I'm doing this car up more for the next owner as I hardly use it!! Haha...

Anybody got any say on the varying part numbers for the crank pulley? AD DJ and so on...any known differences.
B5Nut if your listening...I think I may be looking at the same crank pulley that you got....older part number etc... how did that fare with time...yeah I know you upgraded to the swanky C7...

Has anybody got experiences of aftermarket crankshaft pulleys?

Great advice B5 thanks.... I guess you've sold it for me. I'll get the eBay oem one though I'm dubious how it can be authentic for the low price of £119 delivered!
As per your advice to some other guy, I scraped my arms nicely today whilst tidying up the 8 bolts holding on the pulley so I can get a good purchase on them and avoid any rounding off.

Can you recall off the top of your head the torque specs for the crank bolts, perhaps 20nm? and maybe even the 2 idler pulleys please. They didn't feel tight when I removed them today so maybe 20nm again or less ‍.

Ah one more I got I forgot to ask. Is it always necessary to renew the crankshaft oil seal when changing the pulley?

We'll I finally got the pulley off..... scraped knuckles and arms to show it.

Reg the torque....you said in another forum 20nm + 1/4 turn... it seems like you were talking about crankshaft pulley bolts though the lower bolt of the tensioner was also being talked about and that's 20nm + 1/4 and for this I'd like to be certain!

Ok does anyone have an idea on the torque spec of the idler pulleys please??