Coffee spilled underneath ThinkPad T420

Today I managed to tip over a cup of (lightly sugared) coffee on the table where my ThinkPad T420 was running.  Fortunately it was at sufficient distance that it didn't tip into the laptop, but the liquid spill went underneath.
I quickly removed it from the spill, disconnected power and turned off, and attempted to clean up what I could.  Unfortunately in handling the laptop I didn't keep it upright the whole time, so there was some spread of liquid across the bottom of the machine, albeit not a large amount.
So far as I can see, the major risks to the machine have been that:
Liquid may have leaked into the fan vents on the bottom of the machine;
There seems to have been some leakage into the cracks around the battery; although I removed the battery and cleaned up what I could, I imagine there may still be residue in various crevices
There may have been some leakage into things on the side of the machine, such as the SD card reader
Having left it standing for some time (correct way up so liquid would not propagate further into the system), with the battery removed, I decided to risk turning it back on with battery only just to make a backup of files and type this message.  There's no obvious problem, but I'm going to turn the system back off again immediately after finishing typing. ;-)
I'd appreciate advice on the general risk to the machine here and how I should proceed with getting it cleaned up beyond what I've already done.  I imagine the interior is fairly well guarded against liquid entering whether from top or bottom, but I can imagine there might be some corrosion risk from coffee/sugar getting into the ventilation system.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

if you are worried about spillage and seepage into the laptop, then i would recommend you dismantle the laptop, and give everything a good clean to make sure no stray liquid got onto the laptop. This will prevent future headaches (if you intend to keep the machine for a while).
Once you have the motherboard by itself, you can see whether any traces of your coffee got onto the laptop and see whether the laptop casing has traces. You can clean the liquid residues off using all good PCB board cleaning fluids.
http://support.lenovo.com/en_AU/guides-and-manuals/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-76853
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

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