While waiting for the oil to drain into the Topsider, I went back and checked for the battery. I had to take everything out of the trunk, but then the mat clipped easily onto the top edge of the rubber seal for the trunk, out of the way. The quarter worked fine to open the cells.

But it took me nearly a half gallon of distilled water to fill the cells!

When I say "fill," I mean just up to the point where I could actually see water not far below the lip. When I first learned about cars, the rule I heard was to fill the cell to the lower edge of that little vertical slot, and I aimed for that. But the battery must have been almost bone dry!

The car starts immediately (and, amazingly, was doing that before I rehydrated the battery). Could the battery be on its way to dusty death? Should I have it checked?

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-- Paul W. (The Benzadmiral)
('03 Buick Park Avenue, charcoal/cream)
Formerly:
'97 C230, smoke silver/parchment; '86 420SEL, anthracite/light grey; '84 280CE (W123), dark blue/palomino