If the timing was very incorrect, would this cause smoke to come out of the exhaust? (burnt oil)  

what kind of color blue or black or white.  

white  

its there even after it warms up and its still white, does it smell sweet? if so than its coolant usually bad head gasket and some times  cracked head/clock that is cracked right into the water jacket. black is gas that would be something like retarded ignition timing, stuck open injector things like that and if its blue that's oil, usually that things like bad valve seals and bad piston rings. from the white smoke the gushing radiator i would say you have major damage, but you said you took it to a mechanic, what test did he do? also take your finger and rub it around the inside the tail pipe does the stuff coming out of there smell sweet?  

Well, He checked the compression and he said it was fine, but I started to mess with the timing, and all of a sudden white smoke started to come out of the exhaust.He said it was probably oil. It dosn't smell sweet, but as of now, i'm confused as to what it could be, so I just took it to the mechanic again. He is going to check it and tell me what it is, again.  

compression might be fine i would do a leak down test, have him give you all the numbers and post them up here, i'll tell you if they sound good or not. i also forgot that on some cars white smoke can also be automatic transmission fluid but that looks like a fogger its really think and not sweet smelling.  

If it's coolant, doesn't it usually come out like white "clouds"?  I remember watching my teacher's car puff out some nice ones in her 99 mustang heh... blown head gasket, good stuff to watch  

it depends on how bad its leaking. if its just a little you will have  slight white smoke all the time.  

I won't know anything until monday, but i'm pretty sure it will be a head gasket. But I won't know until then. What would cause the timing marks not to align, even after the distributor was moved. A timing light was use, etc.  

well it could be the timing was set wrong, or that when someone changed the belt, it was installed wrong and they aligned it all wrong. that might be causing your poor running car too, you didn't tell me that. does it have a timing chain or timing belt. if its a chain it might be a stretched chain, it happens a lot on Chevy v8's.  

It is a timing belt. The white smoke came billowing out the exhaust only after I tried to adjust the ignition timing. I did everything I had to do before adjusting the timing, then I attached the timing light. The mark on the crankshaft was like probably, five inches away from the timing marks on the engine block. I shut the engine off, loosen the distributor lock nut (I noted it was a little to easy to loosen this lock nut), I turned the engine back on and started moving the distributor to align the marks, then I wasn't able to move it any further, and the timing marks were still not aligned, that is when I noticed the white smoke in the rear. I kind of freaked out because I know white smoke is bad, but the mechanic said it was oil, and told me I had moved the distributor to much. He will inspect it anyways on monday. It last got the timing belt changed a year ago, but my dad was the one who took it to a mechanic. ( I don't know what mechanic it was, and I can't ask my dad because cancer took him) Which kind of forced me to do a lot of the stuff myself, all I did during that year was oil changes, spark plugs, air filter and brakes, nothing big. Recently though, about a month ago I flushed the rad, then this heating problem started, I assumed it was the timing, because it couldn't have been anything else, at least I concluded.  

ok now it all makes sense, the cars timing is so off that its actually contributing to the car over heating. the belt was put on wrong and from then on nothing can be done to fix it until the belt is put on right with all the timing marks on the cams and crank set right. sorry that it took me so long to figure it out but doing this on-line with out seeing the car is almost impossible.  

Yup, I hope that it didn't damage anything else. Thanks for your help. Stuff like this is one of the reasons I don't trust some mechanics. They try to rig your car up so that you bring it in again.  

Actually, the white smoke thing threw me off. I've seen bad timing, but never white smoke as result of it.  

yeha it did the same thing to me.