freak!
the important bit works :)
Setting the weight manually didn't seem to work but I haven't spent much time on that as I used the util module to set the weight and will solve that minor puzzle later.
Once the weight is set, it does indeed build the cck fields into the form, enabling me to do the things i wanted to do. thanks again markus!
Is there a better way to do this which doesn't rely on module weights? I guess one thing I could do is in the hook_install (when i've gotten it to work) is to check CCK's weight and just +1 it?
freak!