Wow! I've never seen or heard of that either, so you are exploring new territory here.
Glad to hear you are okay. Have you thought of Dzuz clips for the nose? It would have still bent stuff, but it wouldn't have to come up so high to clear.
With 15 trips in and out already, I'd try to make it as quick and painless as possible.

First thing Mr. P glad to hear that you're feeling good enough to work out in the shop! But sorry to hear about the damage to your Rampage. I know one thing next time I pull a motor, I'll be thinking about your cherry picker. Good luck getting the damage repaired!!

I've pulled that engine/trans out of it at least
10 times.. with the same set up... I have no plans
on using dzus fasteners... it normally clears the
front end and the hood.... it was just my piss poor
luck

Keep the cherry picker you have. Get a new ram and reengineer the mounting points a little.

The current set up looks like the lift beam Starts out waay to low. By the time the beam gets to a decent height the rams arm is already extended pretty far. Shorten that aspect of it, and add a closer ram push mount point on the lift beam. Your more then capable and enjoy that type stuff.

My god, that sucks!!!

Most equipment designs have anywhere from a 3:1 safety factor and up designed into them when new. I can't see age in your usage degrading your lift that much over the years. I also don't see many of the suggestions mentioned so far and I'm not offering any, that would easily improve the design up into the 3:1 safety factor area You obviously exceeded the lifts capacity and whatever safety factor your lift had, in this case. You may want to step back and rethink the situation to prevent a re occurrence, with a much worse result

the design of the lift looks flawed to me. thats why i wanted to see the whole thing. look at Monte's his pushes straight up. Mike's base is set further back and pushes out and up, not a good thing imo.

I'm thinking about picking up another lift.. on mine
the front wheels are splayed out like a V and its the
width of the front tires so I have to pull the fronts
to clear.. I'd like to get one that the frame is a H
type so the front wheels would clear

Mine appears to have the same size ram as Mr Ps.....but I have picked up things WAY heavier than a small block/tranny combo. I think his ram is simply in the wrong place.......easy fix. Mine is 30 years old and we have split tractors with mine.

I would imagine the ram is set back on his to help get closer to stuff without hitting the ram on the front.......but again, easy fix. Extendable boom. When I have to do that, I just put a few 100lb tractor weights on the rear of mine

MrP........I also have a lift like you say with splayed legs. I simply cut notches in the legs, pulled them together with a ratchet strap, welded them back up. From what I see, your lift looks really heavy duty, just bad ram placement

Sorry to see Murphy came to visit. His law sucks

But thanks for the reminder that things we have done many times can go wrong

I know lots of people use those and they are handy but I never trusted them much. When I built my shop I installed an I beam with two trolleys, one with a small electric (500lb) hoist and the other has my 2 ton chain fall on it. The little hoist is handier than pockets on bibbed overalls, especially in deer season.