During the war, when Cobra King was up-gunned to 76mm, the gun travel lock was removed from the front of the tank and intalled on the engine deck. On October 24, 2009, Don Moriarty worked on freeing and removing the travel lock and once free, it will be returned to the front of the tank where it was originally installed.
The manual turret traverse assembly was removed by Coleman Gusler so that the turret ring bolts could be removed.
On October 26, O.B. Edens and Garry Redmon continued work on removing the turret bolts. Here O.B. removes a small stowage box and loader's seat from the turret basket so that he can gain access to the turret bolts behind.
Because of corrosion, many of the bolt heads were just rusted lumps and could not be removed, so those bolts were ground off by O.B. At the end of the day, all of the turret ring bolts had been removed which is the one step in removing the turret.
A temporary paint booth was created, based on O.B.'s design. The side rails and hoops from a 2 1/2 ton truck were assembled around the 75mm gun.
Plastic was fixed to the hoops. With this setup, the 75mm gun can be primed and painted.