Watering Batteries and Transmission Leak

I took the opportunity today to water the batteries. You want to do this about once a month - certainly you do not want the water level to drop down to the level of the lead plates or it can cause erosion and shorten the battery life. You make sure the batteries are fully charged, then take your jug of distilled water and fill each cell up to just below the filler cap neck. Here's one in progress in the rear compartment:


I discovered that the rearmost cells in the 5 rear batteries are nearly impossible to fill from the middle compartment, so I opened the rear trunk to access those cells:


The frontmost batteries in the rear battery box are also hard to reach, but if you push the decklid open far enough you can get the water in there:


I dropped one of my wingnuts and stuck my head under the car to retrieve it. While down there, I noticed that transmission fluid is dripping down from the motor / transmission mounting point. This is almost certainly a bad transmission mainseal. I did not replace it when I redid the clutch. It looks like I am going to regret that shortcut:


The worst thing about a leak is having to remove the motor & transmission to diagnose and fix it. The second worst thing is that, if it *is* the transmission mainseal, it has almost certainly impregnated the (brand new!) clutch disk with fluid, ruining it. I don't have time to mess with this now - I'll put a drip pan underneath to catch it until I can repair it.

In happier news, I drove to and from work on a test drive today. No problems at all - commuting will be very straightforward with the Volt914.