Mistakes in Power Steering flush

I just bought my brother's 1998 Tacoma Prerunner V6, and I know he hasn't done anything to it since he bought it 5 years and 30,000 miles ago besides oil changes, so I've started flushing all the fluids.

Did the power steering today, and everything was going perfectly (even routing the return line through the front wheel well), when, just to make sure that I had fully flushed everything after turning the wheels a few times, I started the truck. Of course, I forgot to remove the towel I had covering the belts around the power steering fluid reservoir, and during the one second the engine was on, it got wrapped around the power steering pulley right in front of the reservoir and torn to pieces. The AC belt snapped, and I can't back the towel out of the power steering pulley where it's wrapped between the pulley and the block. Is there a chance I did any significant damage? Or should I just follow the belt changing guides on the forum to correct the issue? The belts probably needed changing anyways! Insult to injury, the guide on this forum even had a reminder to remove the towel!

I also managed to dent the front cross beam on the passenger's side when I was jacking it up (the manual states to position the jack on the beam where it connects to the frame). The jack stand bases are a bit wide, so I moved the jack in towards the center a bit to allow me to get the jack stands where the manual says to position the jack (and I wanted the stands outboard for stability). Whoops! On the driver's side, I moved the jackstand in instead and that did fine. Anything I should watch out for to see if the beam is damaged? It doesn't appear warped, just mushed where the jack made contact.

Thanks for the help! As context, my only other car is a Honda Insight first generation, which weighs about 1,600 pounds, so doing work on a much larger and more powerful vehicle is very new to me.

 

I would use a utility knife to cut it out. Run see if the belts run straight.

 

Yeah just back the belt tensioner off a bit so that belt dosent have such a death grip on the towel. Then cut her out if need be at that point. Then just run it and watch and see if everything is still spinning straight and wobble free. Hard to say if damage has been done till then. You certainly put some serious stress on some things though. To snap one of those belts it took some major force for that to happen. Hopefully all is well! Nothing worse than trying to do some good and prevent issues and instead ya just fuck shit up right then and there, lol. Dang it anyhow right?

As far as your jack and jack stand ordeal i cant quite visualize what you've got going on without looking at my truck to understand. But if you are using jack stands its always best to use the main frame rail as the point of contact. I use a big floor jack when i jack my rigs up and i use the LCA to jack from, you wont damage anything jacking from there. But if all you've got is a lil bottle jack then thats not gunna be a good place to utilize. But reguardless when the stands come out try and use the frame rails to support the truck from.

 

We all do interesting things at times .

It is part of the learning experience .

I was lucky most of mine were well before the internet .

 

As I was driving the Tacoma today and enjoying the feathery touch it takes to turn the wheel thanks to the PS fluid change, I realised I never thanked everyone in this thread for their help. So a belated thank you! Everything has been driving fine the last few thousand miles, and after taking it in to the dealer for a timing belt change (first one in 170,000 miles), they didn't seem to notice anything wrong with the pulleys either

 

The very first thing I did to my truck was flush the power steering fluid. I left the reservoir uncapped when I was turning the wheel lock to lock and it overflowed and spilled all over my Alternator. I thought the damn truck would catch on fire if I started it. Luckily it didn't.