Engine Replacement Questions

My son has a 96 Avenger with the 2.0 liter I4. Last night the engine stopped and will not crank over (the starter engages but only turns a small fraction of a turn). I also cannot turn the engine over by hand with a wrench on the crankshaft pulley. Considering that he has been driving consistently 2-4 quarts of oil low over the last 10,000 miles (it burns oil and he was lax about checking it), I figure the engine has almost certainly seized. He is a college student with hardly any money so now we are looking at the most economical way to fix this. That means getting a junkyard engine and putting it in ourselves.

Question 1: I know that avenger/sebring/eclipse motors are somewhat rare and rather hard to find. Since the head is probably reuseable, can I just get an engine block from a Neon and have it swap? If so, do I have to get the DOHC Neon block?

Question 2: Any other motors that I can look for? I don't want to get into fabricating motor mounts or any re-engineering or anything like that. I just want a straight no-hassles swap.

Question 3: I looked on the autozone site for repair info and it says that the transmission needs to come out first. Yuk! Anyone ever actually done this? Is there no way to leave the transmission in place and just pull the motor?

Thanks!

did u try pouring some transmission fluid on the crank to try to get it to loosen up, worked for me on our old escort. but it still took a lot of torquing on the shaft by hand

did u try pouring some transmission fluid on the crank to try to get it to loosen up, worked for me on our old escort. but it still took a lot of torquing on the shaft by hand

It's surely worth a try. To be honest, I haven't even had the car towed home yet, so I'll probably have to wait until this weekend to dig into it a little more. How did you get xmission fluid on the crank, drop the oil pan?

Thanks!

It's surely worth a try. To be honest, I haven't even had the car towed home yet, so I'll probably have to wait until this weekend to dig into it a little more. How did you get xmission fluid on the crank, drop the oil pan?

Thanks!

oops sorry i didnt put it on the crank... put in on the camshaft. took the valve cover off. poured it all over everything in there.

Get your kid a bicycle. He won't have to check the oil and it will save you thousands.