For all the gear ratio/mechanical questions:
We took a fresh battery and placed the wires from the motor DIRECTLY to the battery terminals. The motor spins and the entire mechanism works perfectly. I do not think the gear ratio or motor itself are the problem. We can do this again and again and it works, so we have not burnt out the motor or anything like that.
We just tried recalibrating, and it did not work

. The breaker on the circuit is the same kind our wheels, 40A.
I changed the code to:
Code:
ballSucker.Set(stickL.GetY());
Full backward on the joystick makes the jaguar show a solid green light for about 1 second, then goes to solid red. When the joystick is forward, the light goes solid red. During the first second, the motor seems to be trying to turn, but after that it dies.