Well I would have loved to prove there was nothing wrong with the geo but just had a crash and the file is corrupted. Going back to the last file I have lost everything apart from the very central part of the upper body. Maya did not even try to save a temp file - errrrrrrr. If you look at the image here you can see apart of the area - it really is something to do with that shader but not sure what. Oh well waist of a day - Cheers Maya.

I had got the whole inner frame made - the pistons holding up the upper body (was coping the final one over when it crashed) and got the chest pieces in the right places.

Edit : Just found one of the AO renders which shows that the surface is flat