Man alive, here's me (a yank) learning how to work on my new rifle from a bloody redcoat! AHHH the irony. Okay enough revolutionary war jokes... You are correct on the dissimilar metals conjunction, as an aircraft mechanic in the Army we were taught about that. Basically - as it was explained to me - different metals have varying capacitance (electrical charge holding, sort-of). Depending on the ambient static charge (free electrons are everywhere) those "voltages" travel to-and-fro which can prompt an oxidation to occur, sort of like a short-out or burn. Well guess what rust is - oxidized metal. So that's what causes dissimilar metals corrosions. In the aircraft arena we used zinc chromate to help protect.
Yes, you can. Remove the magazine tube (not the housing). Remove the barrel band, which you should be able to angle over the front sight with the magazine tube removed - are you can leave it hanging. Then push the handguard forward and it should slide off.
Depends how deeply you want to clean. I'm not sure how different the X is but for a standard big boy, if you just wanted to wipe the receiver and clean the bolt and barrel, you can remove the lever and slide the bolt out the back. Watch out for the ejector as that is only held in place by the bolt.
most firearms don’t even need deep clean until thousands of rounds and if anything mainly just the barrels need a clean, I just got the x model 45-70 packs a punch
