My 244 wouldn't start for work due to a dead battery yesterday, so today my dad and I went to the local NAPA auto parts store and got a replacement for it. Surprisingly, it cost over $89 without tax, a number that surprised even my dad (I wasn't sure how much since I haven't done a lot with batteries, but that still seems high to me). They said they only carried one other type that was $10 more, which was sold out. Did we get ripped off or are the batteries that go in the 240s expensive, due to size or some other factor?

Also, is there such things as "over-filling" the water in a battery? A few weeks ago, my dad and I filled the wiper fluid and decided to check out the battery. It had been starting fine, but we discovered that three of the six cells were dry! So, we filled those and topped off the others. (Of course, just a few weeks later, the whole thing now doesn't work.) I thought nothing of adding the water, but when we got the new battery, my dad decided to check the water levels and they weren't all the way full. We've since topped those cells off, and the car started up on the first try. However, I'm wondering, can you add too much water and shorten the life of the battery?