CMS modification to enable edit permissions

[kether1]

The CMS of the vb suite has very few permissions/ settings. I am looking for a modification or plugin that will solve the following issue:

When a person submits a new article, the article is now in the 'not published' state, but the member who created it can still see it. Since there is no built in way to allow or more importantly dis-allow the editing or deletion of an article after a certain length of time, I have wrapped the edit pencil and link to edit an article with admin permissions only. So the pencil that links to the edit page only shows to the admins or mods. BUT, many times a person makes a mistake and needs to quickly edit something in her/his article. As it is now, I have disallowed this by wrapping the template conditional around that link.

What I am looking for is a way to allow editing of an article for 24 hours after being submitted. That way, if something needs to be changed or updated, that member who published it can make the corrections and or additions. Then, after 24 hours, the article is locked and cannot be changed without mod approval.

This is the way posting in the forums work, but for some reason, the CMS doesn't follow those rules. (which is odd because it follows the attachment limits of forum posts. - I digress...)

Anyway, could someone help me with this? I expect it could be done with a plugin, but maybe it is some simple code. I just really want to be able to use the CMS since I paid for it back when if first 'went on sale' and to this day, I still have not been able to go live with it on my site.

Thanks for your help in advance.
Kether