Just a little post on doing regular car/truck maintenance now so you don't have to do repairs later.
My jeep broke down around 10 PM last Wednesday. The idler pulley broke causing the serpentine belt to come off. Never found the old belt. I pulled over into a shopping mall parking lot that I was near and turned the car off. Luckily the engine didn't overheat nor did the battery go dead. On cars built from about 1990 on up a single belt is used to drive all of the engine accessories. Cars before the 1990's used more than one belt for all of the engine accessories. Not sure if the year given is correct, I'm just guessing.
My wife and I were on our way to pick up her uncle from work when this happened. My wife and I looked online for auto parts stores open late and according to the websites autozone, napa and oreilly's each had a store open 24 hrs. Come to find out after trying to call each one this was not the case. Apparently the 24 hr stores went to 10 PM closing times like all of their other stores respectively. There was another parts store across from the mall but they were closed till the next morning. My wife tried to call for a ride home but nobody was available. Since we didn't have a ride home we had to sleep in our jeep. Not the most comfortable night but we did it.
Got the jeep fixed the next morning after the parts store opened. 3 hours late for work but still made it. To keep this from happening to you please do regular car maintenance. Also keep spare parts in your vehicle even if you don't want to or know how to fix your car yourself. Duct Tape and bailing wire can only fix so many things and can only last so long before you have to really fix the problem.
I suggest keeping the following parts in your car: radiator hoses both upper and lower, belt(s), water pump, alternator, idler pulley, and tensioner pulley . Some of these parts you may not need but once in the life of your vehicle however having them on hand could keep you from being stranded overnight.
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