my dad bought an 86 560SEL a few months ago that turns out it needs a lot of work and now he's giving it to me. I am going to sell the thing ASAP but wanted to fix a few small problems with it. I have to drive it 600 miles home so I need some basic things fixed.

anyways, the belts squeeled a ton. the power steering belts are very visibly cracked on the inside and *definitely* need to be replaced.

I got the air pump and alternator belts replaced OK. in getting to the power steering, I loosened the two mounting bolts (looking at the pulley from the front of the car, at about the 11 and 7 o'clock positions) and the main adjuster bolt (4 o'clock position). the pump still would not budge much and I couldn't get it loose enough to get the old belts off. I thought about cutting them off, but was worried about not being able to get the new ones on.

any ideas? would it be easier to get the fan/clutch pulley off and just do that? the other two belts were pretty easy to change, but these were just really tough and I didn't think it should be as hard as I was trying. I had a huge pry bar in there to pull the P/S pump down to release more tension on the belts, but to no avail. am I missing something?