Ralph, to partly answer your question, you should consider the entire rear suspension system. The shock will typically use 2/3 of its stroke in the collapse direction. Thus, if you have a 3' travel shock, it should collapse 2" from the nominal height. The other 1/3 of the travel is for the extension direction.

So, when you set up your shocks/axle/frame, you will take the 2/3 of the shock travel and add a 1" safety margin to determine the distance from the top of the axle tube to the frame BUMPER (unless you want to risk hitting axle onto frame, you should have a rubber bumper in the system). This will give you the ride height of the car (assuming the proper tire diameter). This should also give you an idea of where the shock/coilover brackets will go. You wont like the ride height if you are like most of us.

If you want the car to sit lower so that the frame slides on the ice at North Pole, you have two choices...smaller tires or raise the frame notch. Smaller tires make a 32 look funky so we just raised our frame notch by having new frame sides made by a CNC laser outfit and cut the rear portion of the existing frame off and welded the new part on. Of course, we had to raise the trunk floor a bit to match the frame.

In summary, use a 1" buffer between full collapse on the shoock and the frame bumper and you should be OK.

mike in tucson