the seals are easy to replace
"Easy" is a relative term. I'm sure a Bosch technician would have a walk in the park with it. It's not hard to F the job right up good. Why does dieselgeek include 2 O-rings in their kit? Oh yeah - really easy to damage it "your first time".
Could you describe the "massive amounts of damage"?
I'm genuinely curious!
look at mark6's last few threads. i personally drove up to PA to help him, he was 1 hour away.
in a nut shell, untended leaking IP, caused coolant leak that lead to an over heat and a head gasket failure as he was driving it. it also ate though the insulation on the IP's main harness and where its close to the starter it ended up rubbing though the now soft wire casing and protection and caused him to have one heck of a head scratching issue with not getting 5v signal from the ips sweep on the needle. i helped him out for days trying to figure it out and the first thing i said was (trace all your IP's wires for a brake) after 3 days of working on it he found it where i described. took the car down for weeks, all because of a dumb leaking ip.
its defiantly not easy as an oil change, but if you follow the guide and dont back those bolts out more than you need and you DONT drop that shim washer out of the cam, its a relatively easy 2.5 out of 10 difficulty jobs that if not done now, could strand someone on their road trip, NOT WORTH IT.
OP, in the time being, put some old socks that you fill with kitty litter and tied off, UNDER the IP and around things that it could leak on for now and drive the prius.
i had a leaking IP and i drove it for about 2000 miles before i could fix it and i didnt have any issued but its was only wetness, no drips.
I forget how bad mark6's leak was but it must have been a doozy to cause this much fuss.
fun part was that he forgot the mark the body to the QA like i mentioned vs the QA to the hat and he put it back to about 4.5 when i got there with my cable. so not bad on his part! his timing is a bit low on the retard on the graph but its fine.