sounds like the geometry is a bit of a mess. Your best bet would be just to remodel that bit. It would probably be alot quicker than the time trying to work out what is wrong.
As for the faces with zero map, it usually happens when extruding faces. Its faces that have no surface area. You can avoid this happening, by extruding in view besides the perspective view. Eg, if you want to extrude, go to the front view and extrude it. Maybe its a maya bug, but i know this aliminates it.