Well, my wife's 2006 S has 73,000 miles on it and well maintained, up and seized last week. I turned it off at the post office went to leave and it sounded like a dying battery. That was it! The garage near the PO said it was seized and I said no way could it be.
My guy towed it to his place and yup, seized. Fluids were all good and it wasn't hydrolocked. Weird!
have any of you heard about anything like this before?

 

No this is very odd. Need to figure out what the cause is, or if something else is locking up making it seem seized like the flywheel, or alternator.

 

Did they make sure the starter was not stuck in the flywheel?

 

It's not the alternator, took the belt off ... nope. I guess it could be the flywheel but my mechanic is a MINI guy, honest and very knowledgeable, if it was something that obvious he would have and must have checked.
I'm getting a used motor with 30,000 miles on it and a six month guarantee. I'm paying the core charge and keeping the motor so I plan on finding what happened.
I have a 2003 With about 165,000 on it. It runs great but it will be good to have an extra motor around just in case.

 

The guy at the first garage checked the starter and it was working properly; the Bendix jumped out and tried to spin.

 

Please keeps us advised of what you find. Compared to others, the Tritec engine is a pretty good piece of machinery regardless of whether it was in a Neon.

 

Will do. It will probably be at least a week and a half before I get the motor back and then I'll need to find the time to commit to finding what the problem is. I will report back.