AC woes

[Mac626]

My engine began making a loud scraping noise a few days ago. I narrowed it down to the AC compressor. After taking off the belt, I determined that the pulley on the compressor was grinding when it turned. I assumed the pulley bearing was bad and decided to try and replace it.

After a few hours of attempting to find a clutch and pulley puller in the 4th most populous county in the USA, I gave up, got pissed off and tried to remove it the old fashioned way (violence). Needless to say, this resulted in damage to the pulley - which I still was unable to remove.

Now it seems that I need a new pulley/clutch assembly, instead of the $35 bearing I originally needed - and I'm still faced with the original problem of removing the old pulley. Since I don't feel like spending $100 +/- dollars to buy the "pulley & clutch puller set" on top of what promises to be an expensive pulley/clutch assembly (and since no tool rental place or auto parts store appears to possess the correct puller set for this freakin car), can anyone tell me how to get the pulley off this thing?

My first instinct is to replace the whole compressor with a working one from a junk yard. However, I understand that I have to have a vacuum pump and some special AC tools to accomplish that.

Any suggestions?

This piece of crap is going up for sale once the AC is fixed. Everything on it is 2-3 times as expensive to fix as on an "American" car - or requires impossible to find tools.