Okay - this is long, but you asked some good questions, so...
cboy said:
Do I understand correctly that you are now suggesting ... that there is too much stuff running off the 12V supply pin provided on the Kelly controller and this is drawing away or diverting power from actually spinning the motor?
Yes. The controller has two parts: the electronics part with the microprocessor - basically all the 'smart' stuff connected to those RTN/5V/12V connections, and the power side that switches the motor that is connected to the giant B+/B- terminals. This is like the brain and the muscles. The problem is not so much drawing power away from the motors because of hooking up a few relays, it's rather that hooking up the relays uses up the tiny bit of power to make the electronics work and the controller goes brain-dead so it can't properly control the motors. Think head-lock to cut off a little blood to the brain so the guy passes out - his muscles still have lots of blood and 'could' work, just no one is home to command them.
Here's some background thoughts:
There are some issues that you have experienced that have baffled posters and some other issues for which explanations seem plausible, but in the end there remains behaviors that no one has been able to explain. So, we plow on...
Your project, data collections, and wiring has gone through a number of iterations. At each stage the idea has been to try to understand the present symptom and offer a remedy for that (new) difficulty while looking back with the hope that the remedy could explain earlier symptoms. This means that some unexplained behavior has been taken as an unknowable divine mystery and efforts redirected to the new issue without a full understanding of everything. This is an unsatisfying way to proceed, but getting the thing working is more important to you than turning it into a research project for the simple sake of understanding.
As things have moved along, I think perhaps it wasn't clear that trying to understand past mysteries was no longer an overriding focus. Just trying to eat the elephant a bite at a time...
So ---
cboy said:
Do I understand correctly that you are now suggesting that the problem does not lie on the grounding side of the circuit at all but rather on the power side of the circuit...?
>> The grounding side is a mystery. That was the whole business with the ground cables and it makes no sense. So, moving on...
>> The power side (from the motor perspective) is a bit of a mystery as well. I have alluded in earlier posts to the idea that with the present phase current limit of 380A it doesn't seem the controller is actually operating with 'torque throttle' on these slamming getaways. It seems that things are going straight because the motors actually are quite close in performance and not because of the Kelly torque throttle feature. I believe that to get that working correctly requires backing down the 'Current Percent' as mentioned earlier. That said, this is based on supposition and you have been able to get satisfyingly straight operation, so that seemed more important than pressing experiments to satisfy my curiosity. I'm happy it is working for you, but it seems to be working by accident, not because of controller regulation - so - confusing.
>> The power side (from the controller electronics perspective) seems a questionable approach, but easily remedied. I think this may be a participant in the puzzle, but not an explanation for all the behavior that has been seen. More on this below.
cboy said:
1) The forward/reverse switch including the LED indicator light (it's blue so the power requirements should be added in) draws a very small amount of current. And that is the only switch in the system that is on and drawing current. Are you saying that switch alone is enough draw on the controller to create such erratic behavior?
No. At this point, all the previous L/R torque imbalances (pulling this way or that) are not really the focus - no one has been able to explain them. Perhaps the way the relays have been wired could have participated but we just don't have the details about what was ON or OFF, or whatever. The recent remarks about the relay power are based only on the present experiment that shows loss of torque on the passenger side. It appeared that we can explain ths latest symptom (but maybe not - see below). Earlier stuff is still in question...
cboy said:
2) The draw from the switches and relays has been there since the beginning. And always it has been powered by the passenger side controller. So why, early on, did the bike pull to the driver's side when it was the passenger side being robbed of power?
As mentioned above, I would very much like to understand the earlier mysteries, but only have a working theory that can explain the present right-pull symptom now that the wiring has been reduced to the bare minimum. The evidence is very strong that this is a problem, and a remedy for this particular symptom is pretty clear. Here the idea is to start simple and work back up to the full wiring instead of trying to diagnose the whole thing at once. I believe that in the end there will have been more than one problem, that this is one of them, and
that alone it cannot explain everything.
cboy said:
3) The kelly wiring diagram shows the 12 volt supply powering, at the same time, the forward/reverse switch, a "foot switch", a brake switch and a two-speed function switch. I am powering only one of those, the forward/reverse switch. So it would appear to me the controller is capable, at least in Kelly's eyes, of powering much more than I am powering without any negative effect on controller performance.
Switches do not draw power and as you point out, Kelly expects them to be there. However, LEDS, relays, throttles, etc do draw power. Here it seems clear that the relays are power hogs and could reasonably overtax the controller power supply. This is speculation based on experience and because Kelly provides no specification or exemplar wiring illustrating the practice. To clarify this point, I encourage you to contact them about drawing an extra 1/2A to power ancillary equipment. In the absence of more information I can only offer that this appears very questionable and remedying it with an unquestionably 'safer' design seems recommended.
As I said above, I was concerned about this earlier and asked for details. Even if the relays do not appear to be participating in the present right-pull behavior, I remain concerned about the design and strongly recommend that you query Kelly on the matter. In the end, it's just one guy's opinion and it would be good for Kelly to offer up contradicting reassurances...
cboy said:
3) ... Perhaps, if I had all of my switches and relays turned on the draw might be equal to or more than in the Kelly drawing, but I have none of my switches or relays turned on...with the exception of the forward/reverse switch.
Whoa. I believed in the post above where you described connecting up the relays and experiencing occasional right-pull that the relays were actually being switched ON. Here I could see that maybe one relay was okay but 3 or 4 would precipitate the problem. If you are saying that simply connecting the relay grounds causes this sporadic behavior with all the relays OFF, then there is yet another odd behavior to explain.... The details of these most recent experiments need clarification.
cboy said:
Perhaps I'm still missing something here but it seems to me the "power side" theory doesn't fully explain what is going on.
Nope. Never intended that it did. Again, I think there may well be more than one bug on the loose and this is just a matter of squashing each as they are revealed.
- I cannot tell you the number of times that I have dealt with engineering problems where not only were there more than one bug, but that the errors canceled each other out in whole or in part. Fixing one just made things worse until other issues were corrected. Argh.
EDIT - oh crap - you cross-posted in between. So - I think you have worked out much of what I have prattled on about here...