Wooooo! Lots of questions! My 416 has power steering and brakes. The truck is fairly easy to drive, so much so my wife wants to drive it (not a put down on women or my wife, but some folks, men included, do not like to drive a vehicle that is manual, the 404's are an example of that and they take a certain amount of physical power/strength to drive, off road with a 404 can be quite a bit of exercise especially at lower speeds, that was my experience anyhow).
Wherthere or not your 416 has drum or disc brakes will depend on when it was manufactured and who ordered it. Older ones seem to have drums all around, newer often come with disks. The drum brakes are simple and work, the disks are more complicated and work better. I have found that with my truck empty I have more than enough braking power, so much so that I can skid very easily when it is wet outside. In other words, the brakes are not the limiting factor when stopping, the tires and road conditions are. Of course with a heavy load the disks will provide more stopping ability.
Some truck, such as mine, come with single circuit brakes, newer truck most times come with dual circuit. The brakes are air over oil, and so there is an air compressor and tank on baord. Some trucks have an auxilary air compressor also. When you start up one of these trucks you don't not just drive away, you must wait for the air pressure to build so that your brakes are fully functional. They will work without the air pressure but with more effort.
The guage cluster is fairly complete but again depends on the trck. I have a engine temp, clock, oil pressure, tach, spedo and idiot lights for charging, and a few other things that I can;t remeber.
The cab has a heater/defroster but the defroster looks as though it will only really work well on the drivers side. The controls are very basic: a 3 position rocker switch for the fan, and some flaps for directing the air.
My truck has single speed wipers(bit of a pain) while some have two speed and maybe even intermitemt.
As I mentioned before I have an auxllilary diesel heater for the cab that is mounted in the storage space below the rear bench seat.
Most of the 416 are 12V. The exception is ex-military which are 24V. Personnaly, I would bugger around converting the entire system to 12V just to make it a little easier to buy lights bulbs. A converter can be easily bought if you need 12V power.
The winch for these trucks are scary powerful beasts! Some fellow on the Mog Mail List had pictures of a winch that riped itself off the truck. I think it was a Hydraulic powered Warner winch and the mounts were fabricated in a local shop, but still!!!. The PTO winch on my truck is massive and is more than capable of pulling the truck out of any sort of trouble. I think someone had mentioned that the winch rating is equivalent to 20,000lbs if compared under North American standards. As Frank mentioned there is a hand throttle to set the engine speed for PTO operation. The hand throttle is also used to shut down the engine(important to know!
). I think if I were looking for a winch, I would get a hydraulic one since I already have the hydraulics on-board. This would be better than the PTO or the electric(IMHO). A rebuilt/used MB Model C winch costs about $2,000USD, a hydraulic winch is probably more.
As for idling the engine, I would think that it is no different than any other diesel. The more low speed idle the more carbon build up. Give her a good run once in a while and blow the crap out! Of course these engines can run at full rpm all day without a problem.
The alt does charge at idle, how well I am not sure. The heater works very well at idle, could be a problem when extreemly cold, hence the auxilary diesel heater. Diesel heaters are also available for warming the engine but it would have to be pretty damn cold for that stuff to be needed. There is on-board cold weather starting equipment that consists of a reservoir and a pump. You fill the reservoir with starting fluid (MB product) and it pumps directly into the intake while starting. The pump handle is located on the dashboard. Odd setup but it supposedly works.
Well, I outa breath! If you have any more questions post 'em and I'll try my best to answer them!