Prius died while it was being driven

9 hours of Labor seems allot to me. Bleeding the Prius engine coolant takes some getting used-too they say. Possibly this is the first one the mechanic did. As far as diagnosis - they know the dead fuse, and all the wires it hooks too. Easy enough to just go around pulling plugs and measuring with an ohm-meter to find out the lowest resistance is the pump motor. Motor's always have low resistance to an ohm-meter. Which is why they make milli-ohmmeters, but not allot of people have these. Still, having identified the lowest resistance is the motor, it should have not taken long to prove it bad. Just hook to twelve voltes with clip-leads and an in-line fuse, seperated from the rest of the car. That whole diagnosis should not have taken more than an hour. Now, I do not have personal experience replacing the CHS pump, but 8 hours seems like a lot.

 

Yes, that does seem like allot. Since the failure was so obvious, it should not have taken more than an hour to find. This is no more difficult than finding a bad radiator fan motor. And 8 hours to replace seems like allot to me, but I have never done it myself. I think they might have went through the Prius engine coolant bleading learning curve on your car, and could probably do the whole job now in 3 hours.

 

I raised the possibility only because the dealer made it sound as if Toyota were interested in this particular failure. If they *are* interested in it, invite them to pay for some of the repair in return for getting back the part to study.