He Turns Old Car Parts Into Household Inventions. His Family Says He Is a Genius.

Names and certain identifying details have been changed at the subject's request. The projects described are real and were documented with permission. This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only.

The garage behind Ray Fonseca's house in Kelowna, British Columbia, does not look like much from the street. A standard two-car garage, slightly cluttered, with a workbench visible through a side window. But walk inside, and you step into something that feels halfway between a museum and a laboratory — one built entirely from things other people no longer wanted.

Ray is 61 years old, a retired automotive mechanic who spent 34 years working on cars. When he retired in 2020, his wife Denise assumed he would finally slow down. Instead, he started building things. Over the past six years, he has designed and assembled more than 25 functioning household devices using salvaged car parts, discarded appliances, and hardware store basics. He has no engineering background, no formal training beyond his Red Seal mechanic certification, and no interest in selling anything he makes.

"Cars are just machines," he says. "And a house is full of machines. Once you understand how things work, the only difference is scale."

Where It Started: A Cooler Made From a Radiator

The origin story is one Ray's family tells with visible amusement. During the record-breaking heat dome that hit British Columbia in June 2021, the Fonsecas' portable air conditioner broke. Replacement units were sold out everywhere. Rather than wait weeks for a delivery, Ray went to the auto wrecker down the road and bought a small radiator core from a scrapped Honda Civic for $20.

Over a single weekend, he connected the radiator core to a length of garden hose running cold water from the outdoor tap, mounted a salvaged car blower fan behind it, and built a frame from scrap lumber. Cold water circulated through the radiator while the fan pushed air across its surface, producing a stream of cool air not unlike a commercial evaporative cooler.

"It was ugly," admits Denise. "It sat in the living room looking like something from a science fiction movie. But it worked. It actually worked. The room dropped by at least five or six degrees in about twenty minutes."

Ray kept the device. He later rebuilt it with a neater enclosure and added a small aquarium pump to recirculate cold water from an insulated cooler, eliminating the need for a constant supply from the tap. The second version cost him approximately $55 in total and runs on less electricity than a desk lamp.

The Philosophy of Car-Part Engineering

What makes Ray's workshop distinctive is his approach to materials. While many hobby inventors work primarily with electronics or woodworking, Ray's default vocabulary is automotive components. He sees household applications where others see junk destined for the scrapyard.

"A car alternator can generate 12-volt power from any spinning shaft," he explains. "A windshield wiper motor is a low-speed, high-torque motor that costs almost nothing at a wrecker. A car thermostat is a beautifully engineered temperature-sensitive valve. Every one of these parts was designed to survive vibration, heat, cold, and years of abuse. They are overqualified for household use."

He sources materials primarily from two auto wreckers in the Kelowna area, where he is known well enough that staff will set aside parts they think he might find useful. He also accepts donations from neighbours — broken vacuums, old power tools, defunct appliances — which he strips down for motors, wiring, and hardware.

Five Inventions His Family Actually Uses Every Day

1. The Garage Heater From a Truck Heater Core

Kelowna winters are cold enough that an unheated garage is uncomfortable for extended work sessions. Commercial garage heaters start at several hundred dollars. Ray built his for under $70.

The system uses a heater core from a scrapped pickup truck — essentially a small radiator designed to produce warm air inside a vehicle cabin. He connected it to a closed-loop circuit of automotive coolant heated by a small electric water heater element salvaged from a broken kettle. A 12-volt blower fan from a car ventilation system pushes air across the heater core, producing a steady stream of warm air.

The heater runs off a standard household outlet through a small transformer and warms his 20-by-22-foot garage to a comfortable working temperature within about 30 minutes. He added a thermostat — also from a car — that cycles the system off when the space reaches his target temperature.

"I am a mechanic," he says. "Heater cores are what I know. This one just happens to heat a garage instead of a cab."

2. The Automatic Garden Watering System

Denise is the gardener. She maintains a large vegetable garden and several flower beds that need consistent watering through Kelowna's dry summers. Ray built her an automated drip irrigation system controlled by a car windshield washer timer circuit.

The system draws water from a 300-litre rain barrel through a small 12-volt pump — a windshield washer pump, to be specific — that distributes it through a network of drip lines running to each garden bed. The timer, adapted from an automotive interval wiper relay, activates the pump for a set duration twice daily. A float switch from a car coolant reservoir shuts the system down if the rain barrel runs dry.

"The entire control circuit cost me maybe twelve dollars in parts," Ray says. "The most expensive thing was the drip tubing from the hardware store."

Denise reports the system has been running reliably for three summers. "He waters my garden better than I ever did," she says. "And he did it with windshield washer parts. I cannot make this up."

3. The Workshop Air Filtration System

When Ray started doing more woodworking alongside his metalwork, airborne dust became a concern. He built a workshop air filtration unit using a blower motor from a van's heating system, mounted inside a wooden enclosure built from leftover plywood. Two furnace filters — one coarse, one HEPA-rated — clean the air before it recirculates back into the workshop.

A speed controller salvaged from a car's fan resistor module lets him adjust airflow depending on how much dust the current project is producing. The system runs quietly on the low setting and draws about the same power as a standard light bulb.

"Breathing in dust is serious," he says. "I spent decades around brake dust and grinding particles. Now that I know better, I am not taking chances. This thing filters the air for about two dollars a year in electricity."

4. The Battery Backup Sump Pump System

After a power outage nearly caused basement flooding during a spring storm, Ray built a backup power system for the sump pump using a car battery, an inverter, and a trickle charger. The system sits next to the sump pit and continuously maintains a full charge on the battery. If the main power fails, an automotive relay automatically switches the sump pump to battery power.

Commercial battery backup sump systems cost $300 to $600 installed. Ray's version cost approximately $85, most of which was the inverter. The car battery was one he already had from a vehicle he had scrapped.

"It has activated twice in three years," he says. "Both times during power outages. Both times the basement stayed dry. That is all I needed to know."

5. The Solar-Charged Pathway Lights

His simplest and perhaps most elegant project involved repurposing old car headlight reflectors and 12-volt LED bulbs into outdoor pathway lights. Each light consists of a headlight reflector bowl mounted on a short wooden post, with a low-wattage LED bulb inside, connected to a small solar panel and rechargeable battery from a dollar-store solar garden light.

The headlight reflectors, designed to focus and project light efficiently, throw a far better beam than standard garden lights. Six of them now line the Fonsecas' front walkway, charging during the day and illuminating the path for roughly eight hours each night.

"They are the most complimented thing I have ever built," Ray says. "People walk by and ask where we bought them. Denise tells them her husband made them out of car headlights, and they never believe her."

The Shelf of Noble Failures

Ray keeps a dedicated shelf for projects that did not go as planned. The collection includes a car-alternator wind turbine that produced barely enough power to charge a phone ("I learned that residential wind power is much harder than YouTube makes it look"), a heated driveway mat powered by a repurposed engine block heater that melted its own casing after two hours, and a motion-activated security light using a car's reverse-sensing radar module that proved so sensitive it triggered every time a cat walked across the yard.

"I retired that last one after the third time it woke Denise up at two in the morning," he says. "Some failures are technical. That one was a marriage preservation decision."

He also attempted to build a small electric go-kart for his grandchildren using a starter motor from a truck. The motor worked perfectly — too perfectly. "It had enough torque to spin the wheels on gravel at a speed that made Denise ban the entire project. The grandkids were devastated. I was secretly a little proud."

What Retirement Gave Him

Ray is candid about what the workshop means to him beyond the practical output. After decades of working on other people's vehicles under deadline pressure, building things at his own pace and for his own household has been transformative.

"When I was working, I fixed problems because someone was paying me to," he says. "Now I fix problems because I want to. There is no deadline, no customer waiting, no warranty claim. If something does not work, I take it apart and try again. If it takes three weeks instead of three hours, that is fine. The process is the point."

Denise sees the broader picture clearly. "He was struggling in early retirement. He did not know how to relax. He is not a sit-on-the-couch person. The workshop gave him purpose. He wakes up excited. He has something to figure out every single day. That is worth more than anything he has built."

Their son, Marcus, who lives in Vancouver, says his father's hobby has become something of a family legend. "Every time we visit, there is something new in the garage. Last Thanksgiving it was a contraption that automatically fills the dog's water bowl using a toilet float valve and a car washer fluid pump. The dog seemed confused. We were all impressed."

His Advice for Anyone Curious About Starting

Ray does not post on social media and has no plans to start a YouTube channel, but he willingly shares guidance with anyone who asks about getting into hands-on building.

Start with something that annoys you. "My best ideas came from irritations. The house was too hot. The garden needed watering. The garage was too cold. When you build something that solves a real problem in your own life, you have motivation built in."

Go to a wrecker or a thrift store before a hardware store. "The parts are cheaper, often better quality than what you would buy new, and half the fun is figuring out how to repurpose something for a use its manufacturer never imagined."

Safety is not negotiable. "I have seen people lose fingers, get electrical burns, and breathe in things they should not have. Wear safety glasses. Ground your circuits. If you are welding, use proper ventilation. If you do not know whether something is safe, assume it is not and learn before you proceed."

Write everything down. "I keep a binder for every project. Sketches, measurements, parts lists, what worked, what did not. When something fails, the binder tells me why. When something succeeds, the binder lets me build it again."

Do not try to monetize your hobby. "The moment I start worrying about whether someone would pay for something, it stops being fun. I build things because I enjoy building things. That is reason enough."