As a newbie here it blows me away to get such helpful replies within minutes! thank you!

The spindle length as I have it now is 121.5 and stamped Shimano so it looks like that is probably OEM and the Sugino crank is likely the culprit. Good to know.

I had already taken everything apart before measuring how much more inbound the chainrings need to go. duh! I'll either throw everything back together again in a temporary fashion or take an educated guess...