Cees, just a few thoughts from my point of view:

Still I don't believe the wing incidence and the horizontal stab position have to do with the landing gear. If you switch from a taildragger to a trike, you may modify these things in one go. But the lower horizontal stab should be made for better stall behavior (the wing wake not hitting the stab) and a more "centered" configuration.

The same (centering) could be true for the later lower engine thrust line position - near to the center of drag. Obviously, on the "flop" this thought was not yet applied. I have no clue why the old models had a high thrust line position, but inverting the engine might have been done to have the carburetor and the tank level and maybe to have a bit lower drag (seems Ed avoided parasitic drag and provided for "good" wing drag).

The slanted (swept?) vertical tail is not Ed's invention. He might have thought that it contributes a down force for stalling/spinning. Maybe this turned out still too small and he added the elevator boost later.

I have no clue either what the benefit of strip ailerons should be except an easier build, no weak spots near the aileron root, and simple linkage without bellcranks. Aerodynamically, I would prefer barn doors.

And another thing you didn't mention so far: the wing structure. The Orion had the upper and lower spar on top of each other. The Taurus has them staggered, the upper spar more back but still so the dihedral braces can be glued on both. What is the intention? Only sheeting the round parts? The plans seem to show no shear webs, though you obviously use them on your Taurus. So you have a full D-tube with torsional stiffness while the original Taurus (and Orion) had not. Did I miss something?

I know old designs from the 1960s where no shear webs and no torsional stiffening are provided, but 1/4" square spruce bars. What a tremendous waste of strength and stiffness, and what a weight! The absence of shear webs could explain why the swept carrier wing had diagonal ribs - it needed to.