Years ago rickets' engine broke down in the middle of a heavily polluted wasteland, with no where else to go, he remained there slowly dementing both mentally and physically. He adquired a fixation with building and inventing.
This led him to compulsivley hoard piles of metal scraps and garbage in his hangar because to him, a collection of junk makes up for whats missing in his life.
He suffers from a rust infection, it's deteriorating him and produces black goo that he drools constantly.