Cant believe Im posting this, but Im haveing a mental-blank day.

I have a model... closed single mesh, UV-skinned, single 24bit skin,
no shaders, and whatever material A7 auto-selected for a model.
The MDL7 files just have (embedded) texture enabled, no materials or effects in the file itself.
Entity is currently ent_create'd and is not running any actions.

When I load up the model without using TRANSLUCENT, it looks fine, excellent.
If I set on the TRANSLUCENT flag, is goes transparent. Cool.
If I crank alpha down to zero, it fades away. Also cool.
But when I crank alpha up to 100 or above, it gets solid ... almost ?!?

It looks like all the normals are flipped or something. It just looks inside-out.
Skin is definately 24-bit, NO alpha channel. And normals I assume are OK,
because model appears fine when there is TRANSLUCENT is off.
The warpage is also occuring while semi-transparent, but its hard to notice...

I KNOW Ive come across this before, and it isnt a model-issue Im certain.

What insanely stupid thing am I overlooking here?

Thanks guys...