o/t - killed my winter beater... help!!

[Woodbutcher]

A little off topic, but when you are desperate you'll do anything. Wrinkles, my 93 S-10 winter beater with a 2.8V6, died going over a big hill last weekend. She was at the top of third gear (I left her up there a little longer and a little higher than usual), and suddenly just when PPPUUUHHH! Sounded like a big muffled fart, or misfire under the hood. Had to get her towed home. She's been pretty good to me. Used to be my daughters truck, till she got T-boned and it was written off. I kept driving it for three weeks while the insurance decided what to do with it, so it wasn't realy bad and drove fine. Eventually they paid her out and I bought it back from the insurance company for $300, put in some cab corners to fix some rust and pulled the dent and resprayed the cab coners and one box side. The body is fine, the interior is fine, she was just a little tired (235,000 km or 138,000miles).

Anyways, it was too cold to check her out (-20 all week) and my shop is full of projects. I couldn't get to it anyways because of a 4x4 I was supposed to part out before the snow flew, but it warmed up to -2 today. I poked around under the hood. She has spark at #1 plug, the fuel pump sounds like it's working, the injectors shoot gas and when I look through the 710 cap, the valves move. When I crank her over she occasionally almost catches, but the decides not to. She will crank fine for a couple of seconds and then seem to hit too much compression and the starter and lights almost die. I hate trouble shooting, so if anyone has any idea's I'm open to them.

ps - we call her wrinkles because of the paint job (I'm no painter, but I can create white oranges!)