It's okay to ask questions

I've been having an issue over the last year.. I have two electric motorcycles, one is a Lectra, the other a home built three-wheeler. But I haven't been able to get them running. I'd get a controller, wire it up according to the instructions, twist the throttle, and nothing happens. Very frustrating, really.

I've gone through several controllers, and I have two alltrax controllers and two logisystems controllers. I wasn't sure if.. each time I hooked up a controller there'd been some sparking, and I wasn't sure if I'd zapped the controller and that's why nothing spun.

The other day I got my latest logisystems controller, hooked it up to the lectra very carefully, and there was no sparking this time. (The contactor took care of sparking) No spinning wheels. Bleah...

Somehow I'd been in a pattern of not asking for help. Y'know, there's this stereotype guy thing that says "I can do it myself, I don't need help". But in this case I reached past that pattern, and I emailed a query to Logisystems asking for help.

They emailed me back a long and very detailed reply telling me exactly which wire to hook up to which connection, and the preferred order to hook everything up. ...AND... it worked! Then I went through all the other controllers I have, hooking them up the same way, and they all work. (I have the motorcycle on a lift)

This means that, shortly, once the Lectra is set up, it's going to have a 60 volt 52 amp-hour battery pack running through a 72 volt alltrax. Given the geometry of the bike this is the largest lead-acid pack it will hold. What I'm thinking about right now, there's a kind of pride behind "I don't need any help" but that's rather silly. It made me buy controller after controller, and if I'd been able to get this advice in the past I'd have had the Lectra running months ago.