I had wires and solder tabs pointing to the rear, had to dremel down the chassis sides and use thicker (double layer) tape at one side to get the ESC case parallel with the chassis sides.
I took a big hit on the side of the car and it broke a chunk out of the thinned chassis side
I certainly wouldn't go for solder tabs sticking outwards.
At the time i never tried solder tabs facing inwards towards battery box because they would of shorted against the Nimh cells, but now with hardcase lipo you might get away with it.
In the end i went for an LRP sphere and it is a much nicer fit.
The other big down point on the RB5 is that the shell doesn't fit the contour of the chassis
- so when its wet you have some very large gaps to plug up to stop you speedo getting wet!