When looking around the OEM partition, I found an interesting file. I completely forgot where the file was located, and what it was called, but it contained a link to **REDACTED**. The link was for a zipped compressed upgrade firmware. I posted the FW ( Removed due to SharkNinja lawyers) on my github as a multi-part RAR.

This makes things much easier as this is the firmware as a proper update for all parts.

The update.img can be unpacked with the RKDevtool or the imgRepackerRK from RedScorpion on XDA Dev forums. The imgRepackerRK is a great option, but must use the option to not checkchip id. When the image in unpacked with this tool, it creates some config files for repacking the image.

Do not unsquash the rootfs.img on a Windows machine as it breaks the symlinks.

Make the changes in a unix compatible text editor, run a mksquashfs, repack with imgRepackerRK. 

Use RKDevtool to load the update.img with the upgrade tab, and upgrade.

It seems all checks are only done when doing an OTA update, and nothing I have seen is checked at boot time.