I was given a Hi-Lift jack and I honestly don't know a thing about them. Where on the car would be the safest place to jack the bronco up without damage? Sorry if this is a ridiculous question, but I guess it's better to be safe then sorry. Thanks in advance.
No, no, no, don't feel silly. Honest to God I've seen guys hurt because they didn't know what they were doing and just plain refused to ASK even though there were 20-30 guys not a few dozen feet away who knew. Getting yourself (or someone ELSE) hurt because you didn't ask is just plain stupid.
A Hi-Lift is a great piece of equipment. Not only is at a jack but if you've got some chain & tow-straps it's also a reasonable winch. Three seperate times I've pulled my truck out of hub-deep mud with nothing more than a Hi-lift & some chain. Rig it the same way you would a come-along and it'll haul your a$$ out of a hole when you need it to.
As for the question that you actually asked, that one can be tricky. Everyone's going to have aslightly different take on this but here's what I've done in the past & how I do it now. If you have a receiver hitch that's a good rear jacking point. I usually slide the flat jaw into the receiver & go to town. Gotta be carefull to not get too high & allow it to drop to one side or the other but as long as you're paying attention it works just fine & will lift the entire back-half of your rig. Fronts are a bit trickier since the bumper had a tendency to curve a bit on the lower half. I used to run a heavy-duty front bumper of welded 4" thickwall irrigation pipe and the easy thing to do was to just slip the jaw into either end of the tube and jack it up. With a factory bumper what I've done was to torch a small square hole in each side of the front that I could use for the jaw. If you don't have access to a torch you can always drill the same hole (don't worry about the top of it being round, the jack jaw will fix that when the weight of the truck is on it). If you don't want to or can't cut the holes in the front you can always use a small length of chain to do the job, just attach both hooks to the bottom lip of the bumper and slide the loop over the jaw, it'll pick up any corner you choose, just be carefull to place the grab-hooks where they either *won't* slip or someplace that if they do the framerail will catch & hold them. I've never had one slip on me but then again I take a few extra minutes to look at my setup and make sure it *won't* shift or slip.
Another thing that's helpfull with a Hi-lift is to cut yourself a 2x2' piece of plate steel or even 1/2" or thicker wood to act as a base. They can be *real* wobbly on that little base they have but drill a few bolt holes & secure it to a 2'x2' foot and that goes away.
/emoticons/
