Mechanical engineering educational resources needed

Hi all,

I'm intrigued by the work of Ian Hopper at bffsimulation.com. He's developed motion control software and electronic cards for DIY flight sim builders. I think I could make his products work with my real Boeing 737 cockpit (details at www.fly737ng.com) to provide realistic control loading and autopilot functionality.

My challenge with his solution is that I have to specify and design the motors, pushrods, crank arms, pulleys and belts necessary to interface my real cockpit to his boards. My problem is that I haven't thought much about forces and vectors since college physics.

The good news is I have lots of space (20 inches of vertical height) underneath the floor of cockpit and a lot of sturdy structure to which to attach the hardware. A short video showing how the control axes move on my real cockpit is at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl2G...eQa2HxsgwD8fSQ

Does anyone know a good source of basic mechanical engineering design for something like this? From Boeing documents I know what forces I need to produce at the user interface, e.g. at the yoke and the rudder pedals. What I need to know is how to predict that force based on the other hardware between the boards and the user. I've tried basic google searches on topics like transmission design, but the information out there is either too simplified or so detailed that I can't find what I'm looking for.

Thanks in advance,
Peter