Bizarre!
My solution was simply to remodel that part without the mirroring (as I had done with the frame part earlier) - I havent posted the new version to my website yet, busy with Splines!
I guess another solution would be, because the 3ds file becomes many object3ds, (im assuming by my grouping in 3ds) that it might be possible to find which models become which object3ds and then transform them appropriately - but that's for another time, im not too worried about those examples on my site, just me playing around.