wire parameters don't like their parents

I am building a mechanical flower that uses pistons and cogs to make the flower petals open and close. Ultimately I will have a single Helper with custom attributes to control all aspects of the flower, for nice clean animation.

My problem arose when I started dealing with the cogs....
The geometry of the cogs are linked to point helpers. I have wired the 1st helpers y rotation to the 2nd helpers y rotation using this expression: -1*Y_Rotation. Everything works perfectly. However this setup needs to be able to move with a greater setup. I linked the cog helpers to a main control point helper. As soon as I do this the wiring breaks.

I have tried various ways of doing this without success - changing what the helpers inherit from their parent makes no difference. I even tried wiring all the transforms from the Main ctrl to the cog helpers. This works for position but not for Rotation since the cog helpers rotate on their own axis.

I am in the process of teaching myself max script but do not have anywhere near the knowledge to know if this is a problem that could be fixed with a script. I am pretty sure that this is a relatively common problem, but have yet to find an answer. I have found other threads where people have had the same problem but their posts had no answers either.

If anyone is interested I have attached a simple setup with the wiring done. Help any any form would be greatly appreciated.