Mike,
With a 1.08 up front and the 6 volt battery sitting as far back as possible in the fuse the plane balances perfectly. If I put the servo's in the tail I would need too much nose weight to balance it. Plus the fuse get's kind of skinny back there so fit is a problem, add the fact that I would have to build servo mounts and add more weight. You never want to add too much tail weight as it takes 5 times the weight to counteract it up front. The carbon pushrods solve the problem of pushrod flex you eliminate moving servo's to the back. It is much better to have them back there if the plane was designed that way, this one was'nt.
It looks like you have plenty of reinforcement up there, although it's kind of hard to tell.
You can kind of see the doublers in the first picture if you look close, nothing is doubled forward of the LG plate and that's why this plane always breaks there. The other two show the plane bare bones.