Tail rust removal without removing the tail

[Rowan Badart]

Hi,

Is it possible/save to clean tail rust without the whole operation, in other words by just cleaning the visible rust stain on the outside?
I know i have to do the whole operation to prevent the rust from coming back, but if i can just clean the visible part for now, it would make me happy.

[Elfpony]

You can possibly improve the look of the pony short term by doing that, but consider that you're just going to be adding water to the washer and possibly encouraging more rust to form inside the pony. I'd just bite the bullet and do a thorough clean out in the first place.

Elf

[Rowan Badart]

Thank you;)
I was afraid of that:P

[RainbowQuartz]

I have a TaF buttons that looked like she only had minor tail rust. I took off her head anyway (I behead all of my ponies because I don't trust them to be clean inside by the looks of their outsides) and she was NEXT LEVEL NASTY inside. If any rust is present it's definitely a good idea to just clean them out, as scary as that sounds. Good luck!

[Rowan Badart]

Thnx, i'll just have to go for it;)
So if i clean the inside, the outside will look better too?
I have a FF butterscotch with a bit of tail rust, her body is a little tiny bit darker than her head....could that be because of rust in the inside??

[RainbowQuartz]

Thnx, i'll just have to go for it;)
So if i clean the inside, the outside will look better too?
I have a FF butterscotch with a bit of tail rust, her body is a little tiny bit darker than her head....could that be because of rust in the inside??

Sometimes it's related and sometimes it isn't. I'm working on a Glory restoration right now and her body looked pretty dirty from the outside but most of it was gunk on the inside. Sometimes head/tail mismatch just happens. My Coco Berry has it and she's perfect inside. It's a luck of the draw kind of thing with G1s I think.

[Mirnyj]

Head-body mismatches are common in ponies (head and body may be made of different batches of plastic and therefor age differently) and yours probably isn't related to rust either. It is best to clean the pony trough and trough if you see signs of tail rust as others in this thread have stated. If you are afraid of taking the head off, there are tricks to ease it up. Soaking the pony well in hot water helps ease up the glue and heating the vinyl will make it more flexible and easier to work with. Usually I use a blunt-ish object like a knitting needle to stick in when the glue starts to give and use it as leverage.

[Rowan Badart]

Thank you all for your comments

The de-rusting went well:D the head came of pretty easy by turning it to break the glue, i only had to cut the last little bit of glue.
Butterscotch was pretty dirty inside, both washers were covered with a big layer of rust but luckily the clip was intact.
Oxi clean is great stuff, her body got clean AND brighter making the head/body mismatch even less visible
The only thing that went a bit wrong was the combing of the tail, i pulled out some of the hair:S luckely not TO much, i compared her tail with that of my FF blue belle and it looks oke.

FF butterscotch looks much beter now AND there will be no more rusting in the future:D