When you reversed direction, was this done by swapping wires or adjusting the rotation direction in the ESC settings?
I totally agree that there should be a standard pinout standard for the sensor cable and power terminals on all motors of this scale. Motors should be interchangeable without needing to check any certification list of compatibility. I have a couple motors which I cannot use from XRX because no sensor cables from any of my ESC work with their plugs... Customers should never need to adjust sensor cable wiring to change their motors.
When i figured out the issue with the sensor being covered by the plastic i plugged everything in and hit the gas car goes reverse. Hit reverse and it acted like it had a short. After swapping pins around i was able to get it to go foward but it was sounding like it was skipping a phase. Its totally the issue with the wire and i shouldn't have to do that to get it to run. With it unpluged it worked fine in sensorless mode. The issue is in the cable being not in sync for the esc. I cant test it any further because the cable broke on 1 of the pin and i am not in the mood to burn up an esc trying to be a test subject for that company. Money dosnt grow on tree's