Did I just overfill my battery?

[barrys]

I just did a routine maintenance on my Motorcraft stock replacement battery.
I pulled the battery, put it on a flat table and pulled the fill caps.
After reading in all three manuals and watching multiple youtube vids, everyone kept saying "fill to level of the split rings." I didn't see any split rings. Then, one one of the youtube vids featuring someone at least dressed as a tech it said "fill to the bottom of the fill tubes" which is what I did. I brought the fluid level up to where the top of the fluid was just touching or a hair below the bottom of the fill tube for each cell.
Is that the correct fill level or did I fill it too much?

I used distilled water.

[Note: also posted this to misc electrical but posting here too since posts to this subforum always get great responses.]

 

[SixFoFalcon]

Sounds fine. The fill tubes usually extend about 1/2" to 3/4" down, and the electrolyte level should be just about touching the bottom of the tubes. I bet if you spin the battery around 180° and look at the tubes from the other side, you'll see the notch in each tube.

Good on you for using distilled water.

 

[barrys]

I read and heard the "use only distilled water" thing so many times it's burned into my brain. Our tap water around here is insanely hard -- you would not believe it. To me, that would be like putting baking soda in the battery which would make for a nice mess.

I thought I looked both ways for those slits in the fill tubes. I've seen them on other batteries, but not on this one. This is a 12/08 Motorcraft battery which I believe is made by Johnson Control Corp.