[stephen]

In a similar situation with our 99 Mustang I removed the engine and rebuilt it which cost about $1500. The engine in our car seized due to lack of oil. It turns out it was vandalism, someone loosened the oil filter so all the oil leaked out.

The transmissions on these cars are supposed to last about 200k miles, so if you put in a used engine it should last that long.

I would say it's reasonable to repair the current vehicle. The one issue in putting large amounts of money into an older car is to not spend more than the value of the car since if it's in an accident the insurance won't compensate for that. However, in this case the ~$2K will be well under the book value of the car.

 

[stephen]

I would think a used engine would likely work out OK.

If you want to rebuild the seized engine you would want a machine shop to measure everything for you and tell you what size bearings, pistons etc. are needed. As a minimum going that route would require a rebore/new pistons, probably an align hone, resizing of the rods, and a reground crankshaft plus possibly guide work and surfacing of the heads.