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Does anyone know if I can use a wire brush or wire wheel to clean up the cast pieces of the chassis? Would that take off some kind of coating that protects it from rusting, or is it fine to use whatever means is easiest to clean all the oily grime off the hubs, diff arms, gearbox, central tube, etc?

I wouldn't use a wire brush or wheel to clean the Aluminium parts as the steel wires are much harder than the Aluminium and will put some deep scratches in it.

I think you will probably end up using a combination of things to remove years of caked on grime.

Brass bristle brushes - on the steel drive tube
Paint brushes, tooth brushes (Nylon bristles)
Wooden tooth picks, spatulas, scrapers

Then along side those, a bio degradable De-Greasing fluid, Carb and Brake cleaning fluid.
Buy a couple of Pump up spray bottles like these:- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Solvent-Resista ... B005LOU8XO
to put the fluids in, then you can spray, scrape, spray, wipe etc until you are satisfied with how clean things are!

I also found a home steam cleaner quite useful. Something similar to this (My one is different, but does the same task):- http://www.amazon.co.uk/efbe-schott-Ste ... 68&sr=1-33

John

I agree with John that a normal wire brush may cause issues but if you have a Dremel (http://www.dremel.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx) one of their wire wheels work really well. They are small and clean up aluminium really well, particularly the brass brushes.

Also tooth brushes also work well.

Garry

The other thing that works quite well are those "green pads" that you uses to do Non-stick pots and pans. They are hard enough to scrape off dirt but not so hard that they scrape Aluminium.

John