That would be the best idea as the one you have now is a KIA aka known as killed in action. 
Good points, im just wondering if anything else in the engine is damaged from the timing being off. Im gonna be honest the check engine light has been on a longggg time, not sure if it was from the p0017 problem or not because I didnt get the codes read until it stalled.
Haha 
well every other car in that price range has about the same mileage as mine with an older year, so im not sure how much better that would be
Might make sense to take a look at whatās available at the local rental-car company sales lots. Their cars tend to be well maintained & in the 3-4 year old range, which is the sweet spot for buying a used car. The main downside to buying used rental cars is they pretty much all are configured w/ automatic transmissions, which is not a configuration I personally would purchase. But if youād prefer an automatic, then, yes, take a little time for a look there.
I would not get that used ālow mileageā engine
It may have been poorly maintained, and it may be days away from having the exact same problems as yours
The devil you know . . . 
Removing an engine is kind of a big deal, and there are plenty of things that could go wrong during the process, which is going to make the bill even higher . . .
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Ex-rentals are relative rare now due to supply chain/Covid, few new 2021-2023 cars acquired by rental car companies. I purchased one in the late 80s, car was good and a good price. But some rentals are abused. I was waiting for an off lease to become available early 2021, none to be had, notice car lots had less new car inventory. Ended up purchasing one of the last two 2020s on the lot and they still were offering discounts.
+1
Some of that abuse is accidental, especially if the person who rented it rarely drives. However, there is also the potential factor of intentional abuse of a rental car. I have heard of some people who drove rentals as if they were trying to destroy them, and one never knows what might have transpired with a former rental car.
I never bought a former rental car, but my brother did, many years ago. His Ford Fairmont turned out to be a major mechanical headache, butāin fairness to Enterpriseāthat might have been the case with most Fairmonts. 
True, Fairmonts were poor cars brand new, that was the era of many poor domestic cars.
Jay Leno spoke of rentals, revving the engine in neutral then pull the transmission into drive.
Yup! Iāve heard of people doing that, plus intentionally jamming the wheels into curbs.
I would suggest buying from a dealer rather than direct from the rental company. They cull the herd and pick the best ones. My Pontiac was a rental. Current model year with 30,000 miles. Couldnt be happier with it. No problems. I donāt know what the current market is though. Years ago I asked our fleet manager about buying a rental and his main issue was the sales price was about what they paid for them. So the get free use of the cars and pocket the rental fees. Still what are the options as a consumer? Lease returns are probably better. Our olds was a lease return and that was fine too. Just needed new tires and a couple bulbs. Itās tough out there now and prefer new.
Thing is you get charged for any damage plus the daily rental charge while it is in the shop. An extra charge has already been reserved on your credit card when you take the car out. Just in case.
Rental car companies donāt operate the way they used to. You have the top tier companies like Hertz, Enterprise, Avis etc. Their cars are new, in excellent condition and cost the most to rent. But they do NOT sell these cars.
When their cars become unacceptable to rent, that is they are not in the latest model year or have too many miles or have suffered from abuse or other damage, they move the cars to a second tier company like Budget, Econo etc. I do not know if the second tier companies are owned by the first tier companies, I suspect they are, or that they have some agreement with those second tier companies. You can rent these cheaper.
If you rent from a second tier company, you will often find paperwork in the glove box showing which first tier company originally bought the vehicle. After they are no longer acceptable to the second tier company, I donāt know what happens to them, but Iām pretty sure I would not want one of them.
Oh by the way, remember when Hertz had an ad showing a customer returning a car, jumping a barrier, doing a J turn and then doing a high speed back in to a parking space? I found out they really donāt like you doing that to their cars. But they rented me a Charger so what did they expect?
Remember the Hertz GT H Mustangs, (rent a racer) people would rent on Friday, race them on the weekend, return on Monday. Some had roll bars installed by the renter, then remove before the car was returned.
I have seen thousands of Enterprise rental cars over the years as they vary rarely replaced anything other than oil and filter, tires and safety items, depending on the fleet manager of that areaā¦ They didnāt care how dirty an air filter was cause they didnāt guaranty a mileage and didnāt do any other maintenance items unless requiredā¦ They also didnāt always use the correct oil such as GMās required Dexos as they bought so many vehicles from GM that GM would warranty the engines even with normal blend oil not meeting Dexos standardsā¦ Because of there buying volume they got away with moreā¦ lol
Now I also know that ERC always took care of the customer better then the other big rental companyāsā¦
Yup!
All-too-often, people have postedāboth here and in other forumsāthat rental cars are āwell-maintainedā. Instead, it would be much more accurate to state that they receive the absolute minimum maintenance that the rental company can get away with. Those of us who pride ourselves on excellent maintenance of our own cars would almost certainly not claim that rental cars are āwell-maintainedā.
Last year, I rented a Camry from Avis, and it had three different brands of tires mounted on its wheels, plus one of them was a Chinese-made tire that I wouldnāt put on my own car.
And, in addition to the potential for abuse by customers, there is also the factor that problems with the car are rarely mentioned by customers when they bring the car back. That can cause relatively minor problems to āsnowballā into issues that can bite the buyer in the butt.
People have been known to rent a car just to swap the tires with their own vehicle, Cheaper than buying new tires. I also heard of people back in the days of full size spares, taking new cars out for a test drive and stealing the spare. Dealers used to let people test drive their cars without the salesman on board. They donāt do that anymore.
Nothing new, saw it daily, have even been one that mounted the cheapest tire on the shelf, and if it is not needed for rental, have been told to use X brand tire cause ot is the cheapest thing out thereā¦ That being said, the tires DO have to meet the speed rating for the car, Camry and Accords at least for a few years came with V rated tires and required a V rated or it would vibrate dues to the softer sidewall, found that out the hard way when they 1st started doing itā¦ Yes we had a Road Force at the timeā¦ So we could not out a H rated on it, but we could put a cheap V rated tire onā¦
Best one was we had someone (when I worked for a local rental car place) rent a Cavalier for 2 weeks and when it came back it was running like crap, I mean a completely worn out engine, and the car only had less than 10,000 miles on it and ran good when we just services itā¦Being a new car we sent it to the dealer to find out it had a 5 year old engine in it with very low compression, the dealer had to run the numbers on the engine to even know it had been swapped, the customer did a perfect swap and we nor the dealer could tell by looking at it that it had ever been removedā¦ I asked the owner if he was going to do about it and he just laughed and said if someone needed an engine that bad then they could have it, he ordered up a low mileage engine and I swapped it in and he sent it to the action as needing a new engineā¦ lol
But yes we used to send out cars and with new tires on them and they came back all the time with worn out tiresā¦
I have seen all kinds of stuff done to rental cars over the yearsā¦
I want to thank everyone for their advice and interesting discussion on rental cars aha! I decided to just get the timing components replaced. They called me today and said the car is ready.
I want to test drive the car before paying them again (last time I paid $1800 and the car almost stalled 3 minutes after driving and I had to take it back there right away)
What should I pay attention to when I test drive it? They replaced the brake lines the last time but when I was driving the pedal went almost to the floor before braking. Im not sure if that was because the engine was about to stall or not.
How should the brakes feel after a brake line replacement?
For the engine timing I know I wont be able to visually see any of the components but are there things I can listen for while im doing the test drive?