Bongo 6 Rescue!

I just traded a Fender bass for a Bongo 6 which I believe will end up being a great deal, however, the Bongo needs some work since it appears to have been neglected. At first glance, I noticed some rusty strings which were coming off the wrong side of the tuning posts so that was easily fixed (I will be getting new strings soon anyways but 6 string sets are hard to come by here). The tuners and bridge are a bit rusty so I want to get that cleaned up. Does anyone know the best and safest way to clean some grime and rust off of the chrome hardware?

The next, and biggest issue is that it looks like it has been sitting around for years with full tension on the neck without any trussrod adjustments so the action is currently sitting at about 1/4″ from the top of the fret to the bottom of the B string. When I got home, I loosened the tension off of the strings and I did a small turn to tighten the truss rod. I also tried to put a little pressure on the neck near the nut and body with my leg pushing up on the back of the neck in the middle to help the rod when I tightened it. Is that a good idea, or is there a more proper way? I know I’ve heard of others suggesting to help the rod out when making adjustments and I felt that taking off the string tension might help it so that the rod wasn’t fighting all that tension pulling it the other way. Please correct me if I have been doing any of this wrong.

My plan was to just keep making small adjustments about every 24 hours until it is hopefully back to closer to the stock specs. My last question is should I bother with the truss rod adjustments now, knowing that I have to take the strings off and disassemble the hardware to clean it, or should I do the cleaning first and then do the truss rod? I don’t want to get the neck back in order only to have to fix it again if it is affected by sitting around for a day or so with no strings on it. I’m just eager to get this back to the condition it deserves because this thing is otherwise immaculate in terms of the paint. Not a dent or chip on it.

Thanks, the help is greatly appreciated! (oh and if anyone can tell me how to post a pic here, that would be great, it doesn’t seem to work for me when I try to upload a pic from my computer)