So on the third go around, I spent nearly three hours pouring through all the paint chip books at the shop. (quite literally thousands of chips/codes from 12 paint manufactures covering the last 10 years alone, used by roughly 30+ various car manufactures)   

   Well.... Since Gail let's me get away spending as much time as I do on all my hobbies, (cars, robotics, embedded microprocessor programming, dirt bikes, cycling, software, etc etc etc) I figured it was time to appease her once again.   So my color choices shifted dramatically at the last minute, to BLUE.  OK... me... of course not just any blue.  A bold electric blue, with a green pearl thrown in.

    Notice the color difference in the bonnet out in the daylight, vs the deeper blue of the car in the shade in the garage. 

    
Notice the shade change blue/green indoors/outdoors)

     This bonnet really pissed me off! Especially after having just sold a fantastic condition bonnet along with The Bastard Child.  I decided to try the Aircraft Stripper route, (rather than sand, like I did the rest of the car) to take the bonnet down to bare metal. It turns out it had nearly 1/8" of paint on it. Primer, original brown, red, then another primer layer, then the white on it when I bought it, then the white enamel I'd put on it.  Little did I know there was a ton of bondo all over it to hide all the dings and dents all over it.  Oh well... live and learn.  The fact is...that stripper REALLY does work! I used the blue-change-to-white gel stuff. In under 15 minutes...I had the biggest mess on my hands I've ever encountered when working on cars. I did it out in the backyard, on a big tarp. It worked just as advertised. I still had a bunch of sanding to do...but not nearly as much as it would have been sanding alone.  This is when I discovered the vast (albeit thin) layers of bondo all over the bonnet, to cover various dents and bumps.  Well I spent the better part of a day, just dinging out dents and waves. Got pretty good at it after awhile. You can still see a bunch...so it won't be a show car, but who cares. I plan to drive this sucker regularly! So parking it in a shopping center lot won't bother me either. 

 
(all stripped down and ready for the epoxy primer base coat)  
(first color coat. The light and dark, is paint 
drying and green/blue color shifts with the light)