There's stuck, as in rings rusted to the cylinder walls, and maybe a few pits and rough spots at one place on a few cylinders, and then there's STUCK where the entire engine is a mass of rust. The second situation makes it a boat anchor, not an engine. Even some of those worst-case engines are salvageable with enough time, effort and money, but it takes a total rebuild for them. A little common sense should allow someone with a few brain cells to rub together to tell the difference.
Any engine that's not pickled for long-term storage by filling the cylinders with preservative oil, filling the crankcase to overflowing with the same stuff, and plugging the intake and exhaust systems or loosening all the rocker arm adjustments is going to stop with at least a few valves open to the atmosphere. The cylinders with open valves are going to be prone to rust just from the movement of air and humidity in and out of the cylinders from thermal expansion. The longer the engine sits idle, and the more humid the climate is, the quicker and more severely the cylinders will rust. An engine parked in the Mojave desert for 10 years is going to survive better than one parked for six months on a waterfront pier in San Francisco. I have been very successful at reclaiming some pretty badly seized engines, but I'm not going to pretend they ran as well, or lasted as long as a top-to-bottom restoration job. They have given a pretty good account of themselves to the kind of people who don't insist on getting totally anal about a concours restoration of an old clunker.
Jerry
