hi there.
i met an engineer who worked on track/race GTRs in a automotive book store a while back. he's not just a mechanic, but a qualified engineer.
when looking for my r32 gts-t, me and my father were able to tell what was trash and what was good... but we're no experts, so we had him come and check out the potential buys. ended up only having him check out 2 cars.
what seemed to be an alright car to us, was actually not. he picked up on things we couldn't. they included loose lifters, a good quality respray of the rear quarter and many other subtle things.
the second car was quality and i bought it.
His name is adrian lovelace and his mobile is 0418336319. we worked out a casual hourly rate. it paid for itself because the problems arising from a car we may have bought would have cost in the future.