hey guys just need some advise so im not red faced when it comes to the inspectors garage..
if they see a bad paint job do they look harder at the car?
small signs of rust in the rails,is tha a biig no no?
chassis strength, do they want to see plates welded all around the rails to add strenghth?

any advise is greatly appreciated?

If it has any problems that wouldn't pass a strict blue slip, you are inviting trouble with the engineer.
- Structural rust is bad.
- Any rust is not good.

Depending on what engine you have, and your attitude, will determine how closely the engineer will look.
You might be paying, but their business success is on the line with every approval.

if a engine convo, id call your local engineer and pick his brain, i did and thank god i did i never knew that if fitting a bigger trans tunnel that it must overlap by 20mm and all fully welded in, plus motor mounts must be more than 4mm thick.... no ugly wiring, depends on what your doing

^^good advise, best to liaise with your engineer

As per the last couple of posts, even though all engineers follow the same basic set of rules (VSB's, etc), the interpretation of those rules is very subjective. It's interesting to read the posts of a number of different members that are going through the engineering process and see how different the feedback from the engineers is.
At the end of the day, you need to speak to your own engineer that you intend to use through the whole process from start to finish. You will have a minimum of 2 visits from the engineer. Very likely that it will be three if there are things you miss or they may even throw in a few extra requirements if the rules change between visits. This is highly likely at the moment as there have been a few ruling changes of late (more so for the northern states which were formerly a lot less restricted compared to Victoria).

A few things that my engineer focussed on were (bearing in mind that I'm doing an SR20DET conversion)-

Additional bracing to the inner sill panel
Bracing (box section) between sill panel join and floor chassis rail
Bracing the rear suspension mount to the body
Creating a box section out of the seat rails linking inner sill to trans tunnel
Recommended but not mandated stitch welding all panels
Again just recommended a link between efront cross member and castor rod mounting point on chassis rail
Need to remove standard bracing on underside of crossmember and completely box the entire underside as close to lower control arm mounts as possible
I found this a bit unusual but I need to not exceed the maximum wheel size available for the type of suspension used. As in I'm using a VS Commodore diff so I could go up to whatever the maximum SS Commodore had at the time. With the front being Stanza I can go up to max Stanza wheel size.
With the rad support I could remove the entire thing just run a horizontal 1 inch box section under the upper panel and then just link it to the lower rad support again with 1 inch box.
Then there are the other basic things like have to have a windscreen demister, retractable seatbelts, adequate brakes (boosted fronts), there are heaps more but this is a pretty good list to start with.
Sorry I waffled on but I'm sure this will help you get a good head start!

thanks for the advise guys i know there will be chassis work but never knew just how much work is involved, i put an after market gbox in and all welded round from the inside but not the outside as ive just overlapped n sealed it up n painted so looks real smoth,crossmemmbers,booster rear n front which im buying from maddat, i got comodore disc brakes all round on 15 inch wheels

i was just gonna cut all rust out n clean engine bay with freash paint n hope my brakes were enough lol

If you have a look at my project build (DEMAC's 1200 UTE) then you will get an idea of the things that MY engineer told me for MY circumstances.

I did get agreement that I would not be subject to any new regulations as long as I complete the process within 6 months