Not to cause an argument Cees, but to try and get close to the likely truth. The two fuselages pictured look like standard Top Flite fuselages, the bottom one has the wing cut out moved forward, the wing then had the sweep back added to compensate for the balance. Top Flite did not lengthened the nose, or change much aerodynamically from what Ed drew for them, they had already kitted Orion and Tauri, and probably knew better than to muck about with Ed's designs. Certainly the kit drawing is not much different from that presented in the 1962 RCM&E (and shown in this discussion) so far a dimensions are concerned. So far as engines I think that the later Taurus still used the Veco .45? My LA is about as light as you can get these days, not much different I would think except for the muffler, of course.
As to the fuselage heights, I think we should be careful about measuring from photos, as there will be errors due to the angle the photo is taken, and distortion from printing and reproduction processes. The side view of the carrier T2 shows the the thicker wing is pretty high in the fuselage, but I'm betting the bottom surface of the wing is close to where the bottom surface of the standard wing would be, so that the wing is a clean line along the bottom of the fuselage. In this case the wing chord line will be higher than the standard, and the trailing edge will be higher in the fuselage, so you either add a fairing at the trailing edge to match the original fuselage, or you cut down the fuselage to match the new wing. Given the amount of modification required it would be quicker to make a new fuselage, and I think this is what Ed has done. So, no kit bits then in the new fuselage, I doubt Ed ever built a Top Flite Taurus, he didn't need to, and this new fuselage is different enough to make the purchase of a kit a real expensive way to modify something that could be made quicker from scratch.
Evan