My mechanic made an unsuccessful attempt to pull it and wound up just bending it. Should I buy a new pulley? Is it even available?

 

No...HE should buy a new one.

 

Well yes, that's all coming out in the wash, lots of open projects with this guy.
I see that RockAuto has the pulley. Is it a pain to pull it and press on?

 

The pullers are basically power steering pulley pullers. They work on vacuum pump pulleys if you use some "mechanical aptitude" with caution, otherwise you bend it.

 

The p/s pullers grab the hub so they don't bend anything, and work fine.

 

Yes, a PULLY REMOVER/INSTALLER, (it does both jobs), the kind used on power steering pump pulleys. They grab the center hub, not the outside of the pulley AND they are used to press the pulley back onto the shaft SO YOU WILL NEED THIS TOOL SET. You can rent this tool set from parts stores by depositing the amount that the tool costs to replace and then get a full refund when it is returned to the store. It should come with an instruction sheet.

I'm fortunate to have a very good quality set and have used it several times in the past year on a couple of power steering pumps and to remove a pulley at the wrecking yard to replace the very slightly bent one that was on my truck when I bought it. I also used it to remove a P/S pulley at a wrecking yard to get a good power steering pump mounting bracket off the engine because the dog ear with the square hole for using a half-inch drive ratchet/breaker bar to adjust the belt tension was broken off on my original bracket. Fortunately those "same brackets" are also used on many of the gas engine trucks so they are not difficult to find in wrecking yards.

 

If the pump shaft has a threaded hole in the end like most, you can easily re-install the pulley by pressing it on with a bolt and a small stack of flat washers.

 

Your mechanic can buy you a new pulley and install it. If he bent the old one he may well damage the bearings in the drive portion of the vacuum pump installing it, but that's fine he can buy you a new vacuum pump drive unit as well. You shouldn't even be dealing with this aside from any extra compensation you receive for the inconvenience of the job taking longer than promised.

 

Wow, pretty harsh and judgmental being as the guy's over 1000 miles away and we've got no idea of his ability or experience other than looking at a monitor. And most of the pullers from parts houses are for P/S pulleys making them REAL hard to use on a vacuum pump pulley without bending it. Most all of us aren't mistake-proof, like some of us having to take a 5 speed apart 3-4 times to get it right.
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OP stated his mechanic bent the pulley. The point of outsourcing something is to save time vs doing it yourself. Could be for a number of reasons such as it's a big project, required knowledge you don't have yet, etc. OP paid a professional to do a simple task for him and now it sounds like he's stuck holding a bag of broken parts. I'd be pretty pissed if I paid someone to do something for me and it ended up taking longer and being more hassle than doing it myself while breaking parts that are likely NLA. I would expect to be compensated for that.

I hear you on the 5 speed. Understand that I was in a time crunch and needed the truck to tow in something like a week or two. I tried to outsource the job with money being no object, nobody would do it faster or even guarantee I'd have a working transmission in my possession before I needed the truck. I cut corners on account of that time crunch, trusting the guy who sold me the transmission and did what I thought was the bare minimum. I didn't go into it the first couple times "get it right", due to time crunch and parts availability. I wanted a transmission that would get me a few thousand miles and that I could go through completely at a more convenient time. In the end I spent more time trying to save time, but far less time than outsourcing it would have cost me. It worked out well though because I now have an S5-47, I really prefer the gear ratios over the close or wide ratio -42.