DIY Pedals-steering wheel-handbrake and sequential shifetr

Hello.I am going to start building a 3 dof simulator and except of this I want to build a steering wheel, pedals, handbrake and a sequential shifter.
Some questions about the steering wheel.
I saw some projects that build with small motors and some others with very big motors.Is it about the resistance in the wheel or something else?
At the steering wheel I will put some buttons and potentiometers.I read many projects that uses arduino.Because I don't know how to program the arduino and because I want to keep the hole project simple I thought of something else.If I take a keyboard pad and find which button goes where can I link the steering wheel's buttons there?Will they work?
And a question for the pedals that I want to build.
In the accelerator pedal I think that I should not put potentiometer because they are sensitive.Somebody told me to put a distance sensor.I want to ask if it is gonna be accuracy in this short distance.
Thank you in advance.

Has anyone ever tried a motor from car's steering wheel, which has electrical steering, for diy steering wheel?Do you think it is strong enough for that?My cousin which is a mechanic told me that it is more powerful than a windshield motor but I cannot find technical details to check how much more.