It's all pretty much in the title, but I'll elaborate.

1994 4Runner
4WD, 3.0L
Odometer:194,000

Tuesday night, I drove to a friends house and back and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Wednesday afternoon (yesterday), my mechanic comes to my house as scheduled, to replace my timing belt and water pump. He finishes in a few hours, comes to the door, hands me the keys, and I pay him.

Later that night (10:15pm), I need to run to the store. So I get in the car, turn it on, purrs like a kitten. I start backing out, and as I try to turn the wheel, I realize it's extremely stiff, bad enough that I can't safely drive it. So I text my mechanic; "Sorry to text so late, but I was about to run to the store, and my steering wheel isn't turning. Is there something I could do?" in hopes that he knows what went wrong, and can give me a quick fix. However, he's probably asleep at this time, and I don't receive a reply that night.

This morning I get a text from him (10:17am); "I have no idea why that could be". An hour passes by as I wait for him to offer some advice or help, to no avail. So I respond (11:34am); "I'm sure you're pretty busy, but i need you to come look at this. It worked fine before you replaced the timing belt" to which he quickly replies; "As soon as I'm done here I'll swing by I'm not that far away".

So it's 1:40pm, and he just got here a few minutes ago. He looked at it, said that he doesn't know what happened, and that the power steering went out. He wants me to pay for a new pump, which I reluctantly agreed to.

Did he make a mistake when replacing the timing belt, or is it just a coincidence that a part failed after he worked on my car?

 

The PS pump is removed from the engine to replace the timing belt, but the hoses remain connected. Then, at the end, it's just tilted back into place.

I assume you don't see a puddle of ATF on the floor, and the reservoir was full. So, assuming the problem IS the pump, there isn't much that would damage the pump in a normal timing belt replacement. Sounds like an unhappy coincidence to me.

 

Just one other point. Any mechanic that doesn't at least drive the vehicle around the block after working on it, listening for funny noises and checking for other strange behavior, hasn't really finished the job, in my mind. The job's not done until it has been tested.

 

Yeah, it was full, no puddle.

Well thanks for the quick response guys. He put the new pump in place and it's steering better than ever