Another guess.
I would agree with BDK, Although I don’t know much about it and is a long shot, if there isn’t a motor driver board in that box with the steering motor, the wires MAY have something to do with the digital proportional steering found in “higher end” RCs. I’d put a multimeter on two and see if you can get a switch to close by moving the steering to one side or the other before cracking that open. (probably contains a myriad of gearing). Let us know what you find.
EDIT:
I dug around a bit and found this:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1475741
Seems the servo driver is on the main board and those are the leads from the pot for proportional steering control.
Maybe you cound check the resistance of two that aren’t powering the DC motor and see if the resistance changes as you move the steering of the wheels by hand to confirm.