I suppose that's likely more or less what happened... just kinda strange with the throttle setup I did... the low end was set to 1.2-1.3v range, and without me hitting the throttle, it doesn't even get close to that. But, the good new is, after fixing everything, I just ran setup again, still with those 2 checks disabled, and it appears to work..... WELL... one small thing... it's in "reverse". What would be the easiest way to fix that... should I rotate the phase cables?... or is there a better way. I suppose technically it's not actually in reverse, otherwise it would be much slower, it's just running backwards.
At least things are looking better.. I'll have to play around with the settings some more, and see if I can get things working right while enabling those 2 checks again, but either way, I'm just happy things look like they are working... and am excited that I can give it a test drive soon... though I need to fashion some form of a case. Got a bunch of 20x20mm t-slot aluminum rods... was gonna cut them to size to form a frame... then either print or cut something for the sides... shouldn't be too hard, though likely a bit bulkier than other options, but may just be a temporary solution.
EDIT: OK, so I rotated 2 phase wires, figuring that was the easiest solution (considering it's sensorless, pretty cool that it's just 3 wires... and I suppose you're always gonna be in forward or reverse... no need to worry about phase sensors, and making sure they are matched correctly...). I also narrowed down my problem to a single setting, and it was actually not the 1 of the 2 I thought it was. The controller stays in drive_0 when option 'm' on the recovery config is enabled... the "check for spinning motor, drive_0" option. Presumably this is detecting a shorted FET, since the motor isn't spinning... which is strange, since when I test the FETs, they all appear to be functional. But, probably gonna get some fresh FETs anyway.
EDIT2: OH, and I figured out what happened, why the motor had seemingly spun out of control.... though seems kinda strange to me. What happened was, the throttle connection had either slid off, or far enough off the pins to lose their connection. Which seems a little strange to me... I would have assumed that removing the throttle connection would cause there to be no signal on the throttle pin, not a high signal.