Hello John,
Welcome to MLU!
All good questions and I think very viable for those who are new to the subject of CMPs or has not been immersed in it daily like so many members here.
To give you a start, try reading
http://www.mapleleafup.net/vehicles/index.html
Those pages were written by MLU's founder, Geoff Winnington-Ball. He's no longer with us, but still he left his traces so we can follow up in his footsteps.
With that basis, you can start searching on this forum for more information on each of the sub-items.
By the time you've done that, I'm sure you will have gotten other pointers from the MLU membership.
All for now,
HTH,
Hanno