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    Well, it finally happened: After almost 14,000 miles with the Project E36 M3, I found myself broken down on the side of the road. It doesn't help that I was on my way to work on one of the warmest days of the year—already topping 80 degrees at eight in the morning! 

    I had a little over two miles to go when I heard a small clunk-clunk and saw something black go skipping out from behind my car. A few moments later the dash lit up like a Christmas tree and I saw the temperature gauge immediately start sweeping towards the red. So I found a safe place to pull over and quickly parked the car and turned it off.

    After a few moments of sitting there hoping that it wasn’t anything too major. I popped the hood, got out of my car, and took a look to see if there was anything obvious. The first thing I noticed was that the belts had been kicked off of their pulleys and water was starting to seep out of the overflow tank. Guess running the air-conditioning for the first time in a while was a little too much for it!

    I left the hood open and made my way over to some shade so I was off the side of the highway. Figured I would wait a little while to let it cool and see if I would be able to do a roadside fix. It wasn’t long before a state trooper pulled up to see if I was okay.

    He said he’d give me about 30 minutes to see if I can fix it before he comes back and calls a tow truck.

    Challenge accepted!

    Once the car had cooled down a bit, I started to see if I was going to be able to repair it. I took a few things off so I would have better visibility of the front of the engine. I noticed that both belts were off of their pulleys, but were still intact. So it wasn’t a belt that broke.

    After a little closer inspection though, I noticed that the idler pulley next to the alternator was completely missing! It was almost hard to tell it broke as there was just about nothing left.

    I tried to think if I could somehow engineer a fix to get it to work. My only thought was to use the air-conditioning belt to go around the crank pulley and water pump. But after a quick text to a couple friends who are a little more knowledgeable about the E36 than I am, that idea was shot down.

    So I reluctantly called roadside assistance.

    The customer representative was very nice, but for some reason it took her over twenty minutes to locate me on the map. This was a little bit concerning as I was on a major highway and she was unable to find where I worked, even with the address! After she had finally confirmed my location, she said that she’d contact the local tow companies and text me the arrival information.

    Another twenty minutes later, after not receiving a text, my phone rang and it was the roadside assistance company. She informed me that the road I was on was a restricted road (it was a toll road, which there are many in the area) and that she was unable to contract a tow truck to come pick me up.

    I was a little confused and didn’t know what to do—she didn’t either!

    Right as we were finishing up our conversation, my state trooper buddy pulled up again. What perfect timing! Turns out since it’s a toll road, only certain licensed tow trucks can be used—and he knew just the one to call.

    I had purchased roadside assistance knowing that it would pay for itself with one tow, and with an E36 track car with 178,000 miles it was bound to happen, and it just paid for itself!

    Since I had a good idea of what was wrong, I didn’t want to pay a whole bunch to tow it back to my house. I knew the roadside assistance company was going to reimburse me, but I didn’t want to go through a big hassle with a few hundred dollars on the line. So I had him pull it the two miles up the road to my work and unload it into the back parking lot.

    That evening I bummed a ride home with a coworker and immediately grabbed my tools and went out to my E46 M3. During the day I had gone online and did some research and found out that the pulleys on the E46 were the same as the E36. So in a weird twist of fate, my super clean low-mileage baby became a parts car for my high-mileage track car.

    I don’t think I ever saw this day coming…

    The next day the thermometer needle was up near 90 degrees and as work started to wind down, the sky opened up and dumped heavy rain for about an hour. Thankfully the sun came back out as I went outside to start fixing my car, but now the humidity was through the roof and I was already sweating as got started.

    I quickly got the belts untangled and removed—thankfully they appeared to be undamaged as I didn’t have spares. To get better access to the pulley, I removed the airbox and upper radiator hose. This allowed me to easily unbolt the old one and get the “new” one installed.

    But that’s where the easy part ended. After I had serpentined the belt back on, I realized I had left my ⅜” ratchet at home, so I had no way of getting to the tensioner bolt. After spending about an hour trying to pull the belt on and stretching it from every which way. I had one last idea: take the pulley back off and use that as my leverage while I bolt it back on.

    BINGO! That worked.

    I easily got the air conditioning belt back on, filled the radiator back up with water, and fired up the car. Everything appeared to be working as normal again—no more warning lights and temperature was holding steady.

    I packed up my tools that were now spread out over a couple parking spaces and just before the sun went down, I pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.

    Cruising home on a warm evening with the windows down after just fixing my car in a parking lot felt a lot like high school where I spent many nights with friends doing the same thing. To complete this flashback though I had to make one more stop, so I pulled into the Taco Bell drive through and ordered a couple things off the value menu and a Mt. Dew to wash it down.

    I felt like I was 17 again.—Nate Risch

    Read the previous Project E36 M3 article and follow Nate on his adventures via Instagram and Twitter.