After some hard driving with high speeds & heavy payloads, the transmission was dried out in no time.  The mane issue was high power consumption with no payload & high wheel wear, so the last alignment with a full payload didn't work.  Another round of 1.4 mile repeats with no payload also failed.  Tried charging without the balancer.

Definitely more erratic charging totals when the balancer wasn't used.  Temperatures over 93 & the lack of payload could have also done it in.  The next step is recording throttle PWM over a smaller route.  It should be much easier, but much less sensitive & still require a full charge.

The easiest solution is a serial port interface which allows starting recordings in RAM & dumping the recordings.

Eventually just tweeked it over many 10 mile runs.  The range came back to 15 miles on a 4500mAh battery, depending on terrain & payload.

Lion tip:

Run with the robot on your left.  It drives a lot straighter than a lion can run, so tends to keep the lion on the right & piss off fewer bikers.