Collect Totals brings total to 0 (Zero)

Question

I am trying to process a transaction through code, in some ways it goes fine, but when i actually interact with it from a frontend controller something strange happens:

    var_dump($quoteObj->getSubtotal(), false);

    $ccInfo = array();
    // assign payment method
    if ($payment_method == "authorizenet") 
    {
        $quotePaymentObj = $quoteObj->getPayment();
        $quotePaymentObj->setMethod('authorizenet');
        $quoteObj->setPayment($quotePaymentObj);
        $quoteObj->getPayment()->setCcNumber($cc_number);
        $quoteObj->getPayment()->setCcType($this->returnCardType($cc_number));
        $quoteObj->getPayment()->setCcExpMonth($details['expiry-month']);
        $quoteObj->getPayment()->setCcExpYear($details['expiry-year']);
        $quoteObj->getPayment()->setCcLast4(substr($cc_number,-4));
        $quoteObj->getPayment()->setCcCid($details['cvv']);
    } 
    else {
        $quotePaymentObj = $quoteObj->getPayment();
        $quotePaymentObj->setMethod($payment_method);
        $quoteObj->setPayment($quotePaymentObj);
    }
    //$quoteObj->collectTotals()->save();
    $quoteObj->save();

    var_dump($quoteObj->getSubtotal());

    $quoteObj->collectTotals()->save();

    var_dump($quoteObj->getSubtotal());exit;

    The results of the var_dumps are as followed:
    string '660.0000' (length=8)
    string '660.0000' (length=8)
    float 0

Any one any idea how collectTotals resets it to 0? I have looked in the method, but cannot get a clear answer.

I also followed some advice and started disabling all modules that touch the sales_quote_collect_after, when that didn't work, i also tried to remove the event configs from their xmls, which resulted in the same (meanwhile flushing my caches).

So the result of this problem is that i cannot capture, there is a 0 amount. And even when i don't manually trigger the collectTotals, it is done somewhere else and results in 0.

Any insights, or pointers in the right direction will be appreciated.