Update: oil can arrived late on Friday and was raining yesterday (i need to push the car out of a tight garage and onto the drive to work on it safely) so tried to make progress this morning.
1. Found the gauge sender and when disconnected the gauge goes 'full', so guess that rules out any gauge issues.
2. Got access to the take off, quarter run at a time to initially undo, but far better to go in vertically, filled with oil, did not take much perhaps 100ml, then ran with no sparks for 30 seconds - nothing registered on the gauge.
3. Next step with try and refill through the same take off then seal / pack to be able to add more pressure and get more oil into the pump and also see if the gauge moves at all.....perhaps would it be worth letting it sit for a while to drain into the pump more?
4. if that fails its the disassemble the pump and vaseline.....but that will be next month due to time / travel etc.
