So I guess now my question is this: if I put Rancho RS5000Xs on my all-stock 97 SE, which springs will put my Jeep at a height that will use the right range/portion of the Rancho shocks? I gather that Moog springs are supposed to give me about 0" of lift, whereas the H&R sport springs would give me 1"–1.5" of lift.
RS5000X off the shelf TJ applications come in 3 different lengths that they label by "recommended lift height". Don't go by the lift height, because if looked at that way, they "run long", which is a vague way of saying the actual lengths aren't called for by the amount of lift they're advertised for.
Compared to a basic $30 "stock" equivalent Monroe you could get at O'reilly's, even the 0" lift Rancho is about a half inch longer at compression and over an inch longer fully extended, so it's likely that it would be perfect for a 1" lift H&R spring. If you end up with a full 1.5" you'll still end up with 58% uptravel which isn't a bad thing.
This table should not be construed as a widely applicable application table. It just shows directionally correct hypotheticals based on some big assumptions (like that the Monroe runs out of uptravel exactly at the limit of. Nevertheless, you can see why buying the 3.5" lift shock would be tremendously dumb on a 2" lift, because you'd need so much bump stop that you'd be giving away uptravel. But you can see that the Rancho 0" shock is probably going to be just fine with H&R springs.
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