Today I was home from work feeling a bit under the weather and I spent time on the landing gear. Having measured out the remaining components and determined that the kit parts are reasonably accurate, I convinced myself not to fix the 3mm length discrepancy for two reasons. First, the drawings I have show the dimensions in the "no load" condition, that is, without the weight of the aircraft compressing everything. Secondly, taking a close look at the parts, I determined that it would have been a difficult feat to modify the struts. In the loaded condition, to the best of my determination, there would have been only 1mm to add somewhere and I figured this would not be worth the effort. I therefore pressed on with assembling the landing gear.
Here's what I had to deal with. The Revell kit offers a very detailed myriad of parts as you can see by the below pic of the parts needed for just one assembly.
The above does not include the hydraulic actuator and oil tank, which I intend to install at a later date. The below pics show various views of all of these parts assembled and glued.
One thing the kit did not provide, unfortunately, is the door guides that attache to the front of the compression struts. These are very obvious misses and I think I'll try scratch building some. Apart from that, everything went together reasonably well I'm happy to say. One issue that I discovered in time was that the instructions show the mud guard supports 180 degrees from the correct position. I had already glued these together and had them installed in the struts when I noticed something fishy. Fortunately, the Tamiya Extra Thin glue had not yet set and I was able to pull it all apart and correct it.
Now with both assemblies complete, these will get a coat of Alclad Dull Aluminum and then the hydraulic actuator and oil tank will be installed within the gear assembly. All this needs to be done before the other half of the nacelle goes in as everything fits quite snugly.