The cars from Beiyuan Kingdom are of the highest quality, but they are incredibly expensive. Then there are the cars from Nanchen Kingdom, which are magnificent and outshine all other cars in terms of appearance. Performance is not important; the main point is that they are "good-looking," and their prices are staggering.
The car salesman said that this wasn't even the most expensive or best model, because in rural areas, they didn't dare sell top-of-the-line cars for fear of unsold inventory. Cars sold in big cities and towns were truly astronomically priced.
Yeah?
Zheng Quchi looked around and found that none of these met her requirements.
Technology leads the craftsmanship. She acknowledged that the craftsmanship of these carriages was indeed remarkable, especially the carriages from the Northern Abyss Kingdom, which were far ahead of the others and had achieved the highest level of technology at present.
However, its inherent drawbacks still exist and have not been resolved.
"Child, what are you thinking about?" Brother Sang poured half a bucket of water into the vat, put the bucket down, and walked over: "You've been squatting there for too long, be careful of your wound."
In order to avoid arousing Brother Sang's suspicion that she had been staying at home, she lied and claimed that she had injured her shoulder blade at the construction site and needed to rest for a few days.
Since she was a girl, her brother needed to avoid suspicion, so he didn't check how badly she was injured. He could only repeatedly tell "Liu Fengmian" to carefully apply the medicine to her at night and not to be careless.
"It's alright. Brother, I want to ride in the car." She squatted there, taking a wooden stick and idly tracing lines on the ground.
Upon hearing this, Brother Sang felt that she was simply daydreaming: "Don't just think about things on a whim all the time. Do you think it's so easy to make a carriage? Do you know how much skill it takes to build a carriage? Don't think that just because you know how to build houses and city walls, you can imagine building a carriage out of thin air."
“My dear brother, you can’t do a job you’re not qualified for. I just lack some experience. If an old carpenter could help me, I could definitely build a stunning horse-drawn carriage.” She was quite confident.
Seeing her like that, Brother Sang didn't want to discourage her, so he just told the truth: "Even carpenters who have been around for decades don't dare to say they can build cars. Carpenters who can build cars all work behind closed doors, afraid that others will learn their family's skills. Where are you going to find a skilled old carpenter to help you? If he knows how, he can build cars himself. Why would he need to help you?"
“It’s different… Never mind, bro, I’m free anyway, you can think about it yourself.”
"Don't squat down. If your little sister comes back and sees this, she'll copy you," Brother Sang scolded her.
Zheng Quchi muttered, "Okay, I just feel that squatting down like this to think makes me more down-to-earth, and I won't get carried away with my thoughts."
Leaving aside the craftsmanship for now, the first thing to do when building a car is to design it. She rummaged through her mind and drew up a lot of information from ancient and modern times, taking out what she felt was suitable and technically feasible to prepare.
She planned to first build an eight-seater carriage that could be overloaded but was also easy to drive—yes, the passenger capacity of a small van.
It's not difficult to widen and enlarge a carriage; the challenge lies in ensuring it has both strong load-bearing capacity and smooth movement, which truly tests the designer's skills.
Generally speaking, if you want a carriage with strong load-bearing capacity, you need to use a four-wheeled carriage. You've never seen a two-wheeled carriage or a cargo transport vehicle in any country.
However, without considering bearings, the friction of four wheels is greater than that of a two-wheel steering system. This also means that four-wheel steering is poor. Currently, all four-wheeled carriages are basically assembled on the frame with four wheels connected by axles. The two front wheels cannot turn, so they are not flexible enough or stable enough. Once they encounter uneven roads or run too fast, they are prone to overturning.
Two-wheeled carriages are generally more flexible and can carry people and goods. They are also more adaptable to different roads and can be used for various complex terrains, both short and long distances. However, their disadvantages are also obvious. They cannot handle the loads of rice, stones, wood, etc.
But the car she wanted to build was one that would break this rule.
She wanted the load-bearing capacity and comfort of a four-wheeled vehicle, as well as the flexibility of a two-wheeled vehicle that allowed for free directional adjustment...
This problem is not difficult to solve. If a four-wheeled carriage is to meet this requirement, a steering differential must first be manufactured to solve the problem of four-wheel steering.
This only requires one bogie, and the four-wheeled vehicle can steer freely.
Zheng Quchi stood up, ran back to his room, pulled out a piece of paper, and began to draw on it with a homemade willow charcoal pencil.
First, mount the two front wheels of the four-wheeled vehicle on one frame and the two rear wheels on another frame. The rear frame is then mounted on the front frame and connected by a vertical axle. In this way, it is essentially a combination of two two-wheeled vehicles.
After sketching a rough outline of the vehicle body with simple lines (the exterior design had not yet been considered, so it was just a square frame), Zheng Quchi paused again.
"That solves the steering problem; now it's time to design the vehicle's stability..."
It's important to know that the longer and wider a vehicle is, the more likely it is to shake and bounce when it's in motion, because most roads today are still rural dirt roads, with potholes or uneven surfaces with stones of different sizes protruding.
The sheer aches and pains of being tossed up and then tumbled down as the stiff wooden wheels relentlessly rolled over you.
Although a light two-wheeled carriage could handle such road conditions, the people inside would still suffer just as much as before, even with thick bedding and the "futu" (a type of horse-drawn carriage) providing some relief. But if they were in a four-wheeled carriage, the suffering would be far more severe...
"How do you make shock absorbers for a car chassis? Oh right, I remember now, it's springs, support frames, and mounting hardware..."
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