24v wheelchair motor wiring?

I built a new rig for 2dof. I have it all balance and ready to mount some 24v wheel chair motors. The motors have red/black/thin black wires. I have a 360w 24v power supply. I wanted to check that the motors move ok and get a sense of their speed but when I just tested connecting the red/thick black it runs for a sec then stops. Assuming they’re pulling a normal amperage and not blowing out the power supply they should just keep turning right? Or is that thin black wire supposed to be hooked up to the ground or something? I haven’t hooked them up to the motor controllers yet just to the power supply.

I believe the thin black wires may be a brake, meaning you need to also put 24v on them to release the brake. My motors had the same 4 wires but I used the brakes to hold the rig in place due to the gearboxes only being 28:1 (not self locking).

Looking in your photo you may have already removed the brake or they don't have one. Are they brand new motors?

They aren’t brand new. They will spin for a split second then stop when connecting to 24v. I’ve tried looking up wiring for them with no luck. I don’t think I even tried hooking both the wires together or both to 24v at the same time.

how would I wire to use a brake in case mine are not self braking? Now I’m really thinking that the brake is locking them up.

I had some used motors but mine had the brake unit on. I needed to put 24 across the small black wires to release brake, then 24 across the red and black for movement.

I had a similar issue where they both moved then just stopped, but I couldn't get them to turn again at all.

I stripped them down and found a bit of corrosion inside (probably from uk weather). This caused the brushes that contact the rotor to stay stuck in the retracted position.

I cleared a lot of debris/ rust out, and cleaned with solvent. A very light spray of wd40 / oil in the slider helped too.

The black round caps near where the cable goes in on your photo, are what houses the "contact" pieces and spring which keeps them pushed against the rotor. Maybe check to see it is clear / clean.

In terms of wiring the brake if yours have them, they use very little power. All I done was hard wire 24v from the psu straight to the brake. This meant when I turned the rig on, the power supplies energise, releasing the brake and also powering the motors at the same time. The powering up of the motor holds the rig in place.

Then when you power down the rig, the motor power drops and the brakes engage, holding it in place.

Put 24v onto either of the small black wires, then 0v onto the other. If you hear a click / clunk, then you have a brake unit. If you hear nothing, I believe it may have been removed, in that case you don't have to worry about it and just maybe check what I previously said about checking the contact points are clean / free to move.

So like this?
I just went out and played around with them. No clunk but wanted to make sure I was doing it right. I also unscrewed these big flathead things and pulled out these blocks of metal that I thought were the brake magnets but they aren’t magnetized when out of the tube. Maybe those are the electromagnets for braking? They’re in the black sections of the end of the motor. They were held in by springs.

Yeah that drawing is correct.

If there was no clunk then you won't have a brake, I do think it looks like it has been removed on your motor which is fine.

Those "blocks of metal" are actually graphite, they are what contacts the rotor inside to energise the motor, if they pop out with the spring this I'd a good sign, they are not seized in place. Check them all to ensure they pop out and the springs are OK. Like I said, on mine I found that those little blocks were seized, so the spring couldn't push them to contact the motor hence no movement.

Awesome. Thanks for the help!. Yeah the blocks had zero resistantance and look new. Pumped to try again next week when turkey day is done