Jay Honeck wrote:
The pedals in particular have a heft to them that connotes quality,
and they move very smoothly, seemingly on ball bearings.

If the casing comes off easily, you might take a look. There's a 50-50
chance you'll find steel strips in there that don't do anything but add
weight.

My A&P is welding up a "cockpit" from tubing, using the electrically
adjustable seat out of my Mustang (I just installed leather in the car,
which left me with a surplus seat) as the starting point, which will
make the experience even *more* realistic once we permanently install
the yoke and pedals.

If you're not using an actual car battery, you'll probably need a pretty
beefy power supply to adjust the seat with. Power seats in cars often
have a 20 A or more breaker. One cheaper way to do it without a full car
battery would be a 5 to 10 Ah/20h gel-cell battery, continuously charged
by a wall-wart type charger. The battery can handle the brief bursts of
high current, as long as somebody doesn't sit down and try to adjust the
seat for 20 minutes straight.

Matt Roberds