PW-12H

[Jwfos]

I am using two PW-12H (brushed geared) hub motors in a project.  No steering or varying speed is desired for this project so I am not using a joystick controller.  I am controlling the hub motors with a winch contactor to reverse polarity, in other words provide forward and reverse.  I am using a toggle switch to choose the direction and a momentary push-button to energize the control coil on the winch contactor.  I do desire the hub motors to "freewheel" when no power is supplied to them (as if electronic braking does not exist).

In the prototype phase of the project ignoring the pair of small red wires on each motor gave the desired result.  Now after rebuilding I seem to have lost the "freewheeling" feature.  There appears to be opposition to the wheels turning with no power applied (the mechanical brake levers are not engaged). 

How do I defeat this opposition to "freewheeling"?  Do I ensure there is no continuity of any of the little red wires? Do I short the little red wires independently isolating one wheel from the other?  Do I short all the little red wires together and keep them isolated from ground or do I ground them? 

I do not have a great deal of experience in electric motor technology and none in wheelchair electric braking.  I have found no information about what those little red wires are connected to so I can not make an educated guess.  I do not want to compromise the primary function of the motors but loosing "freewheeling" impacts battery life and the overall function of the project.

Please help!

[Jwfos]

I am still interested in what exactly the litte red wires do but I found a work around for my problem that I will share since not much information is available for these motors. 

The electric brake or opposition of the wheel turning on these wheelchair hub motors, and I assume other brushed motors since the winch contactor makes use of the notion, is achieved by shorting the motor leads.  In other words the winch contactor I used and all that I could find online had closed contacts across the motor connections when there was no power on the motor.  This is desirable for a winch so the cable does not unspool when you turn the winch off.  I noticed the continuity in determining how to connect the contactor and discovered the significance when systematically disconnecting elements of the circuit testing each time to see if the motors would freewheel.  When I found disconnecting the motor allowed it to freewheel I connected the motor leads together by themselves and the motors would not freewheel.

My work around was to install a truck solenoid between one of the paralleled motor leads and it's connection point on the winch contactor. Then I parrelleled the coil of the solenoid with the toggle switch so that the momentary push button also closed the solenoid.  That removed the shorting or continuity of the motor leads when no power was applied allowing them to freewheel.  This fixed my problem and I hope this experience will add to the knowledge base for these motors.