"Long or short, asthetics or is there something more to it?
When I lay out my tank profile and set in the dummy engine and trans etc it looks like the wheel base is only about 3mtrs, tip to tail is about 4.5 mtrs"
speedster , there are minimum w/b lengths set out per class in the rule book , that said it's one of those decisions ...length will add to your straight line stability but detract from your stability when things go bad....this is conjecture but I'd reckon as the w/b increases relative to the track ( axle) width that the chance of "pencil rolling" would be greater...the other extreme you'd expect would make the car "squirmy" under power as the "leverage" that the rear has relative to the length is greater....( that's why dedicated drag cars have a narrow rear axle).
The weight transfer issues in this pursuit aren't as critical as in as in the drags , you don't have enough traction , the gearing is too high and there is no reason ( unless you're at the really sharp end) to hammer it off the line so having the rear " way out back" isn't really a penalty.
The limited opportunities to test and the shortage of similar vehicles to compare with mean that a lot of planning in special construction cars comes down to what you think works......taking ideas from other places that you think worked for them, they may be obvious they may not be so.It's hard to be scientific about it with such a small pool.You need to decide how you will do things and why .At the point that things aren't going so well you need to examine whether what you built is working the way you intended, for the reason you intended.....weeding out the weak links.
" .....how come you put the rear axle there"....."because it looked good".........." what sort of a reason is that?"......" well when I asked people who were supposed to know about this stuff they just waffled on about rubbish so I figured I'd be buggered if I was gonna put it where it looked crap because if it didn't work there I'd look even more stupid , and still be going slow"...............
Put it where it looks best ( to quote a famous LSR man Chris Hanlon, "if it looks right it probably is)and meets the minimum requirement for your engine class , remember you might want to go up a class one day however you may not and anyway there are always going to be improvements you will want to make after a few years so you can stretch it then. In the end if it goes slow and looks ugly no-one will care what you do , if it goes slow but looks cool ......there is no end to the potential
...few understand what I'm trying to do , but they vastly outnumber those who understand why..
