2.8 troubles: random misfire, power loss

Hello all!

I had an account here some time ago that seems to have disappeared so I had to re-register.

Anyway, to my problem. Got an 84 2wd Ranger XLT with a worn out 2.8. Have some compression issues on a few cylinders that seem to be stable for about the past year. Its been running fine for a long time with the exception of the vast amounts of oil smoke. But just a few days ago I was going up a hill and all of a sudden it felt like it was out of gas. The more I pressed the accelerator the slower it went. That lasted about 30 seconds then it was fine for a while. It did it again the next day, then went away and was fine just like before. Then I was driving on saturday night out to a friends house and something else happened. It started misfiring randomly and popping almost like a backfire in the lower RPMs while driving. At idle it was just missing so bad that it wouldn't run on its own. Power has cut nearly in half. And it started running a bit hotter than normal. It wont go up hills for anything now, even small ones.
So I pulled the plugs, they were all fairly well fouled up, with the exception of the number 2, but I cleaned them up some and put them back in to get me home. The number 2 though, had hard white mushroom head-like deposits on the ceramic. I asked one of the mechanics at work what that meant because I've never seen anything like that before. According to him that was most likely caused by a weak spark or an incomplete burn. Thats all I know at this point. I haven't had a chance to do a compression check, but I kinda doubt that is the problem. This came up almost immediately. I'm thinking either a head gasket, or some problem with the ignition.
The coolant level was low a few days ago, and I don't see any signs of leaks. There was some coolant overflow on top of the reservoir tank when I checked it. I topped it off and checked it again yesterday and it was low again, but not by much.

I'm going out to check it again in a few. I drive it today to work and back and it seemed to run fine, but there still isn't any power.

Any ideas on what this might be? Im kinda leaning to the ignition system. Right after I got this thing the timing advance wire for the distributor broke and it acted almost just like this. Little power, running hotter than normal. Im at a loss here though, I don't have a ton of money to throw around at this thing chasing problems right now, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the length, and thanks in advance.

It might be worth checking the PCV, it is in the passenger side valve cover. Mine would barely stay running and did alot of backfiring when mine fell apart.