Ah, that was'nt the problem here, the bit that was off screen was also over the wrong part of the texture, in an area that was hard to recognise,
but your explination does explain a rather nasty incident i had with a shield a while back, after 5 days and coming close to throwing my computor out the window, i dumped the whole model, an hour later i had a replacment unit that was miles better, every cloud as they say.

Cheers guys.