come to think of it...now that you pointed it out...my sheeve plugs do that and i didnt realize that is what was happening here ....ill use the sheeve plug as a reference since im familiar with that. 
 
Thanks for pointing that out :)....it isnt the fact that the file is on a ext2/3/4 partition..its raw data on the storage system and not a file on a partition..which explains why any file sytem mods i made did not affect the boot of the kernel....
 
I usually create a 100MB ext2 filesystem...put the kernel there...than boot to a ext4 filesystem as root. ill redo that and make the u-boot changes needed....now this makes entirely more sense to me.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [fedora-arm] Freescale boot kernel
From: Henrik Nordström <henrik@henriknordstrom.net>
Date: Sun, October 02, 2011 11:19 am
To: webwillow@thewebwillow.com
Cc: linuxarmcross <cross-distro@lists.linaro.org>, fedoraarm
<arm@lists.fedoraproject.org>, Gordan Bobic <gordan@bobich.net>

lör 2011-10-01 klockan 23:29 -0700 skrev webwillow@thewebwillow.com:
> Can anyone provide me with a little insight to configuring a feescale
> M53 device to boot to another kernel...

Your default boot commant is not very friendly, loading the kernel from
raw blocks on the mmc controller (sd card etc).

> bootcmd_mmc=run bootargs_base bootargs_mmc; mmc read 0 ${loadaddr} 0x800 0x1800; bootm
> bootcmd=run bootcmd_mmc

I would recommend you make a new bootcmd_ext2 which uses ext2load to
load the kernel. Much easier to change kernel that way. Then change
bootcmd to refer to that one when verified working.

Regards
Henrik