Rich Benoit has been enchanted with Tesla electric vehicles since the company first rolled out its flagship sedan, the Model S. The IT manager turned his curiosity into YouTube fame in 2016, cranking out videos about the cars, including how to buy, fix and mine wrecked Teslas for spare parts.

"The reason I started my YouTube channel was to kind of demystify Teslas in general. So I purchased a Tesla Model S a few years ago, and I started taking it apart to see if I could put it back together," Benoit said. Today, his channel "Rich Rebuilds" is approaching 500,000 subscribers. The most popular episode, "Can you drown a Tesla motor?" has garnered 2.3 million views in less than a year.

Dubbing him "Dr. Frankenstein of Teslas," his followers frequently send payments to support his video blogging habit, as well as random items for his cars, home and garage.

He's received custom car parts like lug nuts, door handles, mats, as well as air fresheners, cleaning products and more. Someone sent him a life-sized poster of Elon Musk. Someone had pizza delivered to his house, which Benoit liked. On the weirder side of viral video stardom, a fan sent Benoit a puppy preserved in formaldehyde in a jar.

Over the years, Benoit said, followers increasingly reached out asking where to get a good deal on a spare part, or offering to pay him to fix their cars when Tesla service centers couldn't or wouldn't do so.