Originally Posted by
Scooper
You should be able to carefully mask the painted areas where you don't want the paint damaged and then carefully apply a viscous semi-paste chemical stripper like
Jasco Premium Paint and Epoxy Remover with a small throwaway brush to the race and steerer.
If you're careful you shouldn't have a problem with damage to the paint on the crown below the race.
I've done this with success more than once, but YMMV.
+1 to Stan's suggestion though the first thing I would do would be to press fit the race and see how tight it is. There's some chance you might not have to remove anything.