And that helps him tune his cam gears how?

They're right, though- you need to clean the timing side of your engine. That much rust on the pullies and that sprocket there won't do your belts any good. Rust on the turbine housing and exhaust manifold can't do much, but the backplate of the compressor housing looks pretty bad.

As for the cam gears, you can't just randomly adjust them. You either have to experiment with them on a dyno, testing small adjustments until you find the best setting for power, or degree the camshafts, which involves a lot of work finding valve timing events and adjusting the camshafts until the events precisely match the cam card. This last one is something there have been threads pages long describing, and I can't give you any more detail because what I just typed is about all I remember from the last one I read.