S60 Steering: How to clean the steering rack surface?

[ilmiont]

What's the safest way to clean this dirt and grit off the rack surface please?

As I've written in a few other threads previously, the boot on my offside inner tie rod failed, and when I got it all off today this is what I found.



Link to high-res image

With the light fading in the evening I decided to carefully slide the boot back over and leave it for the morning. I'm thinking a can of compressed air but I'm not sure what to follow it with. How real is the risk of scratching the surface if I wipe it round with a cloth or am I overthinking?

There are also blobs of red and yellow grease all over the place - I don't see these in any videos of this procedure. I wonder if someone else has been in here before me, or is this normal for the ZF rack (I think most videos are of the earlier SMI-equipped cars).

There's no sign of any power steering fluid anywhere. I flushed 2l of fluid through the system in the spring, taking it from dark brown to clean green, and it's still clean with no apparent change in level today.

Obviously I want to clean this up without scratching the surface and making a bigger problem in the end. I plan to try and get the inner tie rod off tomorrow. It doesn't seem terrible but there's some play; it holds its weight but moves fairly easily. The outer tie rod is actually quite stiff, comparable to the new one.