Spilled sparkling water on my keyboard and now it's a bit janky. Any tips on fixing it?

[Karthik_Ayyalasomaya]

So my model is a 2022 Framework 13 (12th gen I think). I’m running Fedora Linux if that’s somehow relevant

Hey everyone, so as the title says through a (somewhat comical) series of events I spilled water on my keyboard. After this the keyboard and TouchPad became super janky with the TouchPad sometimes stopping working altogether while on the keyboard some keys sometimes don’t register but other times just type on their own (space bar sometimes won’t register when I click it and then starts spamming on its own) or some keys are connected to other keys (when I type . it actually types out q.)

Actually q specifically seems to be connected to a lot of keys, with 1 and a both also being redirected to q. As for the q key itself it seems to also register an alt keypress along with q

Anyways I popped open the laptop, got rid of the dust with some compressed air and cleaned the internals with some isopropyl alcohol and let it dry for a bit. It does seem the TouchPad is working better now but the keyboard isn’t yet

Anyways I wanted to ask:

1. Is there anything else I can try before buying new parts?

2. If it is screwed, can I get away with just buying a new keyboard cover? Basically how can I determine which part of the laptop exactly is broken

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated as I’m generally pretty clueless. Tysm

[James3]

Take the keyboard apart as much as you can and then clean all bits in distilled water. Putting it in a bath of distilled water is fine also.
Once you think it is clean, dry it throughly. The drying might take days depending on what method you use.

If that does not work, the next step is an ultra sonic bath is distilled water.

alcohol does not actually help much in these situations.

[MJ1]

@Karthik_Ayyalasomaya

can I get away with just buying a new keyboard cover? Basically how can I determine which part of the laptop exactly is broken

Maybe, but I’d strongly suggest getting a whole new input cover. The keyboard is attached with a lot of very tiny screws. And people have said it’s easy to strip them, even when being careful. Strip a screw & it might get stuck not in correctly. Your keyboard may not sit right, may not fit right or feel right. Save yourself the trouble.

[Elliot_Lu]

You can also try soaking it or wiping it with alcohol. Alcohol has a lower evaporation temperature so it will allow help speed up the process. It can also help to remove some corrosion. Just make sure it is completely dry before plugging it back in.

[MJ1]

@anon81945988

I dropped a phone in the river, from my boat. I had to wait for the tides to change then search in the mud, the next morning with a magnet.

Then wash in a bucket of water, then rinse in rain water, then take apart and rinse again whilst vigorously shaking in more rain water, then dry fro three day. The phone then worked for another three years

It wasn’t water-resistant or anything? And you used just rain water, no alcohol?

If it could survive 3 years after that, I will never give up on a water-damaged device again before giving it a good chance.

[James3]

One of the points why distilled water is better than alcohol is that to actually wash things away one needs to bath the item in liquid you are cleaning with.
Spraying some liquid on and then wiping it off, is only really cleaning the surfaces you can get to, and not underneath things where the initial spilled liquid might have got to.
The liquid that was spilled was something dissolved in water, so using distilled water to remove it will work perfectly. You have not dropped something oily on the laptop, so you don’t need something that dissolves oily substances.