Just recently had a fender bender with my Prius. I have damage to the front left fender that exposed and damaged the coolant resevoir. I found out from the repair facility that this part cost $649 to replace! By contrast the high intensity headlight only costs $180. I really thought that these were more expensive than that.
Did you mean the thermos bottle on the driver side (didn't know what left you meant)? Yep, that could be expensive.
I do not know about gold plated, but considering that it is supposed to maintain the coolant reasonably hot for 3 days (for what ambient temp, I do not know), it would need insulation, vacuum, and silvering on the bottle, like they do with thermos bottles for coffee.
Question: If it's an expensive fix, why did they place it so close to the bumper? Wouldn't they put it closer to the firewall?
There's only so much room in there and things had to be wedged in where they'd fit. It's not a safety issue to put it near the bumper so that's where it went. One thing I did notice, I thought the HID would be a lot more... Sure it isn't just the lens they are replacing?
If they didn't put the coolant res. there, I'm sure there'd be something equally pricy in it's place. What's inexpensive to replace these days anyway?
