heres symptoms, need diagnosis fast, please help

[new2bmw]

1984 318i. Ran the car after sitting for a year. Ran fine for 4 days. Heres what happened on day five
-idle was terrible, car felt like it was going to shake apart, got worse when put in drive or reverse
-no power, pedal to the floor from a stop and it crawled until 80km/h
-ran fairly well cruising around 80
-misfires at uneven intervals while driving, kind of a pop, pop sound
-seems to be no vacuum at the vacuum advance selenoid, the hose going to the intake manifold.
-spark plugs look fairly good, number 3 was a little black but not too bad
-seems like a fair amount of smoke coming from crankcase when i open the filler cap, not sure if this is normal
-instrument cluster says engine temp is fine, but it seems to be getting really damn hot under the hood.
-checked all hoses and cant find any that are cracked.
Please help me out, i have to wait until there are ne cars within 500 feet until i pull out of anywhere, no way in hell i could pass anyone on the highway, its my only vehicle right now. I am stuck and cant think of anything. i dont have a compression tester and cant afford one right now so any other tests would be great.
heres hoping!

[euroshark]

The lack of power and misfiring sounds like the distributor backed out to a very retarded setting. Try turning it clockwise as well as counter clockwise in small increments while the car is idling and see if anything improves. It's very possible that the distributor clamp came loose... Make sure your AFM is plugged in. L-Jet is so basic that it's possible for the car to run without it (I've seen it for short amounts of time, I don't know about longer than 30 seconds or so), or maybe see if you can verify that your AFM is working properly by swapping in a known good one. Also check your throttle position sensor, if it's not sending a signal or if the signal is totally whacked out it will screw things up while still letting the car run. Really the only three things that would make an L-Jet powered car run like that are the distributor, AFM, and TPS, and I would check them in that order.

[FLUTE007]

meooooowwwww

[Julien]

uber clogged fuel filter can do that

[Lair]

Make sure all the plugs are firing first.

[Huff]

Possible Fuel pump or relays...

[new2bmw]

thanks guys

it was the fuel filter, what a mess! now all the car is doing is misfiring once and a while, trying to figure this one out?