Need a little guidance if available

[mikefocke]

I'd sell the car for what I could get...probably part-out value of ~$4k.

I see no reason to put the kind of serious money you will need to swap an engine and transmission and ECU and .....into a 148k mile car unless it is pristine and the rest of the cat has been maintained to the max...and it has all the options and mods you want. Too many other lower mileage Boxsters out there with improvements over your era car can be had for prices that make it seem uneconomical to repair to me.

Boxsters aren't 356s, they have an economic life cycle and then they die and you move on to another. I doubt in 17 years we'll see many article on the $100k restoration of a 986.

IMHO, YMMV