When we do a ground up resto, reassembly starts when we get the body back from Ross at the panel shop.
The body comes back on a trolley with the bonnet attached.
Once we get the body in the workshop the first thing we do is take the bonnet off and put it in a safe corner and cover it with a blanket. It stays there until the car has been fully reassembled. Only then do we remount it and finish assembling it. Mostly this is for convenience because it gets in the way, and also because the chrome, all ground to fit in the panel shop, takes months to get back after the body arrives.
With my current personal resto of a 3.8 coupe, which I'm doing at home, I left the bonnet on. Mostly because due to limited space I didn't have anywhere safe to put it. So instead of leaving it til last I set about assembling it on the car. As much as anything this was because I already had the chrome, and the engine and gearbox are still out being dealt with by specialists.
What I found though was that with the car on the hoist, you can literally stand in the engine bay with the bonnet shut. This gives you a view of the bonnet catches that makes adjusting them a snack. Essentially, normally you can't see them closing at all and the adjustment process is a slow combination of guesswork, Braille and bad language. Normally, just mounting the bonnet safety catch on its captive plate is an awful job. But stand where the engine isn't and it takes minutes. Adjusting it from inside, under vision is a gamechanger.
