SMIC leaking water - is it toast?

[Def]

I pulled the SMIC off my redtop clip tonight and cleaned it up. I immediately decided to see if it'd just hold water to see if the seals were in good shape. Two slow dribbles form at the bottom corners of BOTH end tanks when I fill the core up with water. I've looked around, it it appears that both the leaks are forming on the joint between the endtanks and core. The clip and SMIC looks really clean, and I saw it run in front of me, so I'm a little surprised that it would be leaking on both sides.

It does not look easy to take the endtanks off the core since they're crimped together. Is it easier than it looks?

Is the SMIC dead? Should I just go ahead and bite the bullet and get a FMIC kit?

I was thinking of doing something like the SCC Project Silvia to improve transient response, but don't want to deal with that while doing the SR install. So it'd be a GReddy VSPL or something like that.

Bah - 4 "problems" on the install so far - who knows how many to go