I recently purchased a 1985 K100RT.  The allow wheel, engine and rear differential case are really grungy from lack of cleaning over the years.  On car forums a number of guys suggest using Distilled Vinegar, Easy Off Oven cleaner or Simple Green as possible options to remove years of grime from alloy wheels.  Any recommendations?  Thanks,

jim

Where the alloy is not painted you can use the oven cleaner but not on the wheel as it will lift the paint and leave it looking worse than before
Repaint the wheel (ask Charlie for which paint to use) and on the bare alloy it will clean up well using WD40 and a brass brush in a drill (don't use steel, it leaves traces of steel in the alloy and rust discolours it)and time is the key as well as los of mess.

I've used stuff called Autosol (I think it's a German made product) on the Battlestar Galactica. It's brilliant for shining up alloy and chrome. A mate of mine is a professional wheel cleaner / fixer-upperer. Swears by the stuff.

My wheels are aluminum alloy, non-painted.  I ended up using Simple Green degreaser and it did a pretty good job.   I put the wheels in a oil drain tray to contain the mess,  soaked the wheels using a rag and Simple Green, let them sit for a couple minutes.  Then I scrubbed them using a green fiber pad.  They looked pretty good and the fiber pads didn't damage or scratch the wheels.  There were just a couple spots where I had to use a tar remover product on a couple blobs of road tar, that the simple green couldn't cut through.  On the differential case the simple green was not as successful.  These cases are cast aluminum, non-painted and more porous.  The gunk and tar gets in deep and tough to remove.  They did look much better but I also had to use some brake cleaner to clean some of the real bad spots.