Burning oil is typical for the engines in Proteges and 3's at least. Not acceptable and not something to disregard, but typical. It gets worse over time. There was a time when I burned less than 1 qt per 1,000 miles. It's more like 2-3 qts now. Although it leaks an undetermined amount too. Yeah, these are a real disaster of an engine.
You have 2 types of rings on your pistons: compression rings and oil control rings. Bad compression rings = low compression. Bad control rings = oil consumption. But it is possible to have only one type of ring bad and not the other. So it's not safe to assume that because you have both low compression and oil consumption that you have a ring problem.
So why aren't you just repairing your engine? I'm telling you, it would be a really poor decision to just swap in a used engine without replacing valve seals and piston rings. You'd end up right back where you started. One way or another you have to tear down an engine. Unless you just want to swap in an engine and offload the car right away (might be the wisest choice).
I could understand not wanting to rebuild your current engine if it had seized when it overheated or if it started knocking at some point. Then you'd have to get some machine work done and buying another engine to use as a core might be more cost effective and less risky.
But if you do decide on buying a new engine, did you see the link I posted with all the DE engines? If you're not going to turbo, why mess around with the ZE? Buy the direct swap and move on.
