A cup in the frontmost cup holder in my 2006 CR-V suffered a serious
loss of structural integrity, and some of the soda appears to have gone
into the controls for the air system.  It has affected the fan control
and the recirculate button, in a very weird way.

There are basically now four ways it behaves.

(1) Sometimes, it is completely normal.  Fan knob controls the fan, and
recirc button turns recirc on and off.

(2) Sometimes, it is like #1, except the light on the recirc button has
a faint glow when recirc is off.

(3) Once, the recirc button became "on only".  That is, pressing the
button turned on recirc.  Pressing it again did nothing.  To turn recirc
off, I had to turn the key to off.

(4) Finally, the really weird one.  The fan and recirc button become
coupled, so that each fan position has a particular behavior for the
recirc button.  E.g., it might be like this:

  Fan at first position: recirc is on.  E.g., if recirc is off and I
  turn the fan to the first position, recirc comes on.  I can turn
  recirc off by pressing the button.

  Fan at second position: recirc is off.  Can turn it on by pressing
  the button.

  Fan at third position: recirc is off.  Pressing button does nothing.

  Fan at fourth position: recirc is on.  Pressing button does nothing.

...and so on, with some positions normal.  Sometimes at some positions
of the fan it even is delayed: recirc comes on, but I can turn it off,
and it will stay off for a second and come back on.

On more thing I've noticed.  It is usually fine right when I start,
then, if it is going to act up, starts within a couple minutes, and then
clears up after a few minutes (around the time things start to get
warm...coincidence?)

I took it in to have this looked at, but all the dealer did was run
diagnostics and look at logs, and said nothing shows up, and suggested
that it would probably get better as it dried out.  They said if it did
not, they would have to replace the whole air system control panel.

If it was just a water spill, I'd guess the dealer is right, but soda
leaves a residue.  Is that conductive (and possibly causing an
intermittent short)?  (Or is it highly resistive, making it hard for a
switch to make contact?  I'm at a loss to explain how anything could
explain the weird behavior I'm seeing--that coupling between the fan
control and the recirc seem odd).

So, I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to on purpose spill some
water on the thing, to try to wash away or at least dilute the soda
residue, if it continues to act flakey.  Or is that totally insane?  

If not, how long should I wait for it to clear up on its own, before
deciding that it won't and trying the water?  Or is there something
better than water to use here?

(How about water, followed by some blasts of air from one of those
compressed air cleaners for electronics, to try to blow the water out?)