A person needs passion, imagination and maybe a few loose screws to look at a big, greasy pile of motorcycle parts and envision the magnificent piece of motorized artwork that Stewart and Renee Garrison displayed Saturday at the fifth annual Quail Motorcycle Gathering in Carmel Valley.
"These two bikes here were found in a room about 3½ years ago with 70 other exotic British motorcycles, all completely dismantled — all the fenders were together in one pile, all the tanks were together, all the motors were together," said Stewart Garrison, a contractor from Arlington, Texas. He got four motorcycles "out of that room, and those piles," he said.
"The guy had collected parts for 40 years."
Garrison needed six months to sort all the parts into the correct piles, he said.
"We'd basically take two sets of wheels, then go around and try to find a frame that matched the paint," he said. "Then we'd try to find the motor. Then we'd try to find something else. Anything that was missing, I had to make. It took about four years to put them together."
One of his completed masterpieces was a gleaming black Brough Superior motorcycle, a 1936-vintage SS90 with a Watsonian Sport sidecar built to carry a very petite passenger.
