I believe the timing on my car is off, i have a 87 non turbo. I have a hard time starting it sometimes, it fouls out really quickly and easily, and now i'm having a vibration from the motor at mid rpms. and i notice some backfiring occasionally when starting up. does the crank angle sensor adjust the timing??

 

Well, to answer your question, yes it does. How many miles are on your car, and have you given it a full tune-up and checked out your throttle position sensor at all? Run any injector cleaner recently? :-)

 

its got 110k miles, newer plugs and wires, havent checked out the tps sensor though

 

Technically, no. All the CAS does is tell the ECU how fast the engine's turning and where it is in the cycle. The ECU adjusts the timing accordind to it's input sensors. But if the CAS is out of adjstment then the entire timing map will be out by the same amount because the ECU thinks the engine is somewhere it's not.
The timing can be checked with a timing light. There are instructions for doing this in both the Engine and Engine Electrical chapters of the FSM.