I think your family are tinkerers, and they are a rare breed. A group of people who just love taking things apart, bringing them back together and doing all sorts of other things with them. My family is a bit like that but we never had the technical expertise. I'm indigenous from northern Ontario and a lot of my cousins and relations have a grade school education but there is a whole lot of excellent small engine mechanics. I have one cousin who barely spoke any English but her regularly swapped while engines from trucks to keep old vehicles running.

I tinker myself which is why I learned about computers and computer technology on my own but never to a really high level.

So every generation has their outliers and your family were probably the same group of people that made things or fixed things in earlier generations.