Is my Monster Moto half dead?

After a lot of welding and working on my sim frame I moved into building the electronics part. And then came the great disappointment. One of the channels of my MM shield seems to be dead. I followed @RacingMat tutorial and code.

I connected pins 4 to 9, gnd and 5v between the arduino and the monster moto. Pins A4 and A5 (also tried A0 and A1 while also changing it on the code) to the center of my potentiometers and 5v and gnd to the other two pins on each pot. I also used an aluminium heat sink with thermal grease perfectly fitted over the VNH2SP30 chips and a cooler over it.

After reading the code a few times and comparing it to my wiring, and checking that the wiring was correct, I went ahead and plugged the arduino into my usb port, green led turns on on arduino and red on MM (pwr). Then I connected a car battery to the MM + / - pins, making sure the polarity was correct. I had two small DC motors connected, one started turning, the other did nothing. On the channel of the motor that was working a yellow (dir) led was on, if I turn the pot, the led turns off when the pot is in mid position, and the other yellow led on that same channel will turn on when continuing turning the pot. The other channel did't turn on any leds no matter if pot was being set into any position.

So I disconnected the power and inverted the motors, same problem, only 1 channel was working, the same that worked before. I tried inverting the pots and adding some debug code ("Serial.print(analogRead(AX))"), both pots reading was correct on serial monitor, one channel still not working. I checked all the soldering on the pins that connects the cables between the two boards, +, -, A1, B1, A2, B2, all look fine. Tried replacing the cables that connect the boards together. Also tried inverting all the arrays for the VNH2SP30 pin definitions on the code. I used a voltimeter to check the A B pins, the channel that works reads about 6.X volts (I have pwmMax = 155 in the code), the channel that doesn't work always reads just a few millivolts, no matter the pot position, it doesn't change. Both chips doesn't feel hot when touching them, and never heard any sound or smell coming from them.

Should I assume one of the channels of the shield came DOA? Or is there something else I can test?

Im so mad right now, the shield wasn't neither cheap or easy to find where I live, and it's the last piece my sim needs to be finished.

Yes I saw that but sadly I can't order online without having to travel a few hours to the Customs office and fill some papers to receive anything, stupid 3rd world country bureaucracy.

too bad...

Did you swap or mesured all conection cables? I had such a Problem with a MM and after a while i found out it was a faulty jumper wire.
Also you can try this code http://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Dev/Arduino/Shields/MonsterMoto_Shield_Example.pde
It's the sample code from Sparkfun. I always use this to test my MM the first time.

Yes i tested several sets of cables and tested they had 0ohms resistance, also tested the sparkfun example code and even some custom code. Today I was pushing the chip pins with a needle and noticed one that was loose, so i pushed all the pins down with the soldering iron, now none will move when pushing a needle, they all seem connected but still wont work, I guess the chip is bad, gonna try to get a new one as soon as i can. Going to save this one, maybe in the future I can use the channel that works to add a 3dof for traction loss.

And yes @RacingMat, I've read the manual for the chip (couldn't find a manual for the board), but I don't have the equipment to take the chip out and run tests on it.