I am setting up a PF 523 (a new one, as the installed ones are in another state) with the same setup as it is installed, except no load (motor only). The motor cables we use are shielded vfd cable, with just enough wire exposed to land on four terminals. as I recall, we didn't have this issue while testing with our unloaded motor.
As for the direction change, the front of the drive does show the reversed command as a blip. I'm certain the drive is intentionally reversing the motor, but I need to narrow down why. I'm going to try putting control wires close to the input and output leads at different angles to try to reproduce or eliminate this problem (depending on the initial result of the test). Thank you for all of your replies, and yes, I will CERTAINLY post the fix.