I was just out playing with my old(5 years or so) hi-lift jack. It doesn't climb down, it appears the spring that pushes the switch bar down is too weak, I had to work it down with a screw driver. I'll try to find the replacement spring, but my problem is,

I have a warn semi hidden winch setup and I was trying to lift one side of the front end by the tow hooks. Well, the bumper tweaked and I stopped. I tried first with the bumper lift chain setup wrapped around the hook and though that the hook was pushing the bumper. I tried it with just the jacks beam, and the bumper still tweaked and is now slightly askew.

So what can I lift against without damaging anything?

 

I don't think there's much you can hook up to with that type of jack unless you have some after market bumpers or accessories. You'd probably be better off using a floor jack to do the lifting.

 

They have a device that looks like it has hooks that you attach to the wheels to lift up one side of the axles. I am considering that and keeping my factory bottle jack handy for when I have to unhook to pull the wheel. The big problem I am running into is the bottle jack is much too short and inconvenient. The slightly smaller problem is the only time I have had a flat I was in a pasture and the floor jack was very unsteady on the plywood. With the offroad base, the hi-lift jack seems secure.