Wow! That must have been a hell of a jolt to rip that big ol' stud out of the frame rail. I don't feel so bad for over thinking this now though. My original thought after dropping the front 3" was "just slap the original length shocks on there and see what happens". After seeing your pics... I'm glad I decided to frankenstein some brackets for it instead.
I thought the term POS only applied to Ford vehicles? Maybe that was a different acronym...