my camry has 170 k miles on it and i was wondering how much it would cost for me me to rebuild or swap it, and when should i rebuld it. It has lost a lot of its torque.

 

Do a compression check or better yet, a leak down check. I think the Toyota manual says the comression should be like 155 (min) to 235 psi. And of course if the compression is low performance suffers.
If the compression seems low you dump in several squirts of oil from an oil can into the spark plug hole, and recheck compression specs. If the compression goes up, your rings are bad. If compression is unchanged, it is the valves and you may be albe to get by with just a valve job.
Since you notice a loss of power already, you may already know the answer to your question though but perhaps the loss of power can be explained by some other problem.

Most people just buy one thats been rebuilt or "remanufactured" cause it is faster than having your old one gone through. If youre on a budget, who isnt, you could do your own "in car overhaul". I did this to my 88 Nissan pickup. This is a valve job and new rings, and maybe connecting rod bearings and will buy you another 50,000 or 100,000 miles. It cost me $500 in parts to do, 6 years ago. At that time a shop wanted $1000 for a rebuilt engine installed, which was low ball even then.

A decent rebuilder will have been in business for a while and will have a good warranty, the more comprehensive, the better. A decent rebuilt engine will have new pistons and all new bearings, and reground crank etc.
Heres a price list for some rebuilt camry engines. Looks pretty steep, you can probably do better with a longer search .
http://www.rebuilt-toyota-engines.co...lay_engine.cfm

 

You have the option of buying a new engine if you're looking for a daily driver-ish? kind ov thing but if you're looking at ur camry at a performance stand point, it's better to rebuild your current engine w/stronger parts. i my opinion that is?...


one_to_hate