HTC Dream / T-Mobile G1 trackball cleaning

In a recent radio escapade designed to listen to the Cherry Ripe British Secret Intelligence Service spy station, my phone copped a few millilitres of high caffeine energy (and high sugar) energy drink across the front. Now, I'm all for mixing food and technology, but not like this.

The trackball worked intermittently and bits it was sticky and generally unpleasant. When moving the trackball on the G1 / Dream you should feel a kind of "ticking" in the ball. Sadly, this was no more the case and so I figure encrusted sticky sugar (or the technical term "gloop"!) had made it's way into the sensor.

Having read on the Internet some similar horror stories of muppets who tried to clean it, I thought I would exercise some common sense. I

1. Turned the phone off
2. Removed the battery
3. Removed the SIM card
4. Removed the memory card

Next is actually cleaning it. I could have picked an industrial solvent like dihydrogen monoxide

, however I like a solvent that evaporates quickly, and isn't likely to short out circuitry, or cause corrosion on the PCB if there's any sodium chloride in it (most DHMO you encounter will have some NaCl in it), so the solvent I picked was ordinary house hold metho (methylated spirits).