thanks katzu that’s exactly what I more or less figured out last night, although the mesh still gets a bit messed up when you use it in UE4
so pretty much confirms what the problem is
could tweak the mesh somewhat in UE4 using retargeting but still was twisted too much to actually use
now more or less just trying to think of some way to get a model into blender then get it properly weighted to the UE skeleton, so retargeting & animations will work correctly.