As soon as Li Guodong returned to Datong, he met Wang Quan, who had not seen him for almost a year.

Wang Quan returned to the north with a caravan. He heard that the Jurchen army had been defeated and had withdrawn to Liaodong. The caravan was preparing to go for another trip to naturalization and then go to Khalkha Mongolia. After this trip, he could make a lot of money.

"Good brother! I finally saw you back! I miss you so much! I heard that the bandits were attacking Lianghuai, but I didn't worry about me." Li Guodong walked to Wang Quan and gave him a bear hug.

"Brother, the thief's first thief Zhang Kewang has surrounded our Touhu City for three months! Later, Zhang Xianzhong came and said he wanted to attack Luzhou, so he gave up the siege. The thief's first thief Zhang Kewang is just a 17-eight-year-old boy. We still know him, why did he turn against us? Fortunately, Zhang Xianzhong still remembers us." Wang Quan replied.

"How are the casualties of brothers in the village?"

"There are not much casualties. We rely on the city camp to defend the city. There are stone-cattering machines and cities in the village. There are also naval troops shelling the thieves on the lake. The thieves have no armor, which is much easier to fight than Jiannu. I am not even afraid of Jiannu, so why are you afraid of Zhang Kewang's thieves?" Wang Quan laughed relaxedly. In fact, the battle of the Touhu City Village was not easy to fight behind. Zhang Kewang hosted more than 100,000 refugees and attacked fiercely at any cost. The corpses outside the city camp were piled up into mountains. The climate in the two Huai Rivers in summer was hot, and the thieves did not come to collect the corpses. The disgusting smell was emitted outside the city.

However, Zhang Xianzhong, who was lucky later, recognized Wang Quan and the banner of Dadewang Business. In addition, considering that the attack on this city was not worth the cost, he forced Zhang Kewang to stop the attack.

Later, when Zhang Xianzhong asked about this, Zhang Dingguo told Zhang Xianzhong that he had tried hard to persuade Zhang Kewang, but unfortunately Zhang Kewang refused to listen. So Zhang Xianzhong's favorability towards Zhang Dingguo increased a little, and he was a little dissatisfied with Zhang Kewang's stubbornness.

Zhang Dingguo is Li Dingguo, a future national hero. Li Guodong is determined to recruit this person, but the time is not yet here.

"Brother, the pearls we planted a few years ago have been harvested. I'll bring you a batch and see how good you are. I've seen them, and it's not bad." Wang Quandao.

However, Li Guodong didn't care about the matter of Pearl for the time being. The strength of the Later Jin Dynasty was greatly damaged and he had no time to take care of the invasion for a while. Emperor Chongzhen had already intended to let Li Guodong suppress the bandits. Moreover, Li Guodong also knew that Huang Taiji would definitely not give up on naturalization and the Chahar people, and the Ming Dynasty could not easily give up on the Mongols in the north. In order to live up to the emperor's destiny, he had to take into account the overall situation. Li Guodong must divide his troops next. The first thing he thought of was to improve the artillery chariot.

When we went out of the border this time, both artillery vehicles and supplies vehicles exposed a very serious problem: the friction between the vehicles and the vehicle life is too short. To solve these problems, bearings, solid axles and shock absorbers are required.

The shock absorbing device is nothing more than spring blades and rubber wheels. Although the craftsmen under Li Guodong can occasionally create spring blades, this high-quality spring steel can only be obtained by chance, and the quantity is very rare. As long as qualified spring steel blades are obtained, they are all used by Li Guodong to make flintlock rifles and flintlock short guns, and they are reluctant to use them to make vehicle shock absorbing devices.

Building a spring shock absorber for a cannon truck is enough to make dozens of flintlock guns, so Li Guodong cannot use precious steel to build a shock absorber for a vehicle.

So, in order to achieve the purpose of shock absorption, and there is no rubber in this era, how can we reduce the vibration of the vehicle?

Li Guodong thought about it for a long time and came up with a solution: to make tires for sheepskin and cowhide, first cover multiple layers of sheepskin on the wheels, and then wrap a layer of cowhide on the outside.

As for rolling bearings, the current technology is still a big problem. In fact, rolling bearings were already available in Europe in this era. By the 18th century, Western rolling bearing technology was very mature, so by the 18th century, the technology of gun carriages and four-wheeled carriages in Western countries was very perfect, and war horses could pull artillery and maneuver quickly.

Li Guodong himself knew that with his current technology, it was possible to produce rolling bearings in small quantities, but he could not produce rolling bearings with complex structures in large quantities. Even if the quality is good, it would not be popularized if it cannot be produced in large quantities. Therefore, he gave up the production of rolling bearings and used sliding bearings.

The sliding bearings are cast in bronze material. The cast bearings and journals are polished to the bearings and journals, and the bearings and journals are polished very smoothly. The bearings and journals just fit. Then the journals are inserted into the bearings and the other end is fixed.

The first sliding bearing was completed. Li Guodong inserted the journal into the bearing shell, inserted the axle into the journal and fixed it. Then he put the wheel at the end of the axle, and then applied butter to the bearing. After everything was completed, Li Guodong turned the wheel and found that the wheel no longer made a harsh wood friction sound, and it saved a lot of effort when rotating. Although it was not as labor-saving as rolling bearings, it saved more than ten times more effort than the vehicles connected with wood sliding bearings.

After the second bearing was completed, Li Guodong installed the bearings and axles on the gun mount to create a brand new gun van.

This is a twelve-pound field gun carriage. It hangs four horses on it. The horses pull the gun carriage, which is very labor-saving and fast to run.

"General, but we only have one pair of molds. The output of this bronze bearing is still not large. In a day, we can only cast four pairs of bearings." said Lin Shuijie, the craftsman.

"There is no need for so many bearings for the time being. The production of four pairs of bearings per day is enough. First install the artillery truck and ammunition truck with bearings. As for the transport vehicles, bearings will not be used for the time being." Li Guodong told the craftsmen.

Four pairs of bearings are cast a day, and one gun truck needs to use two pairs of bearings, and one ammunition truck needs to use two pairs of bearings. The ammunition truck and gun truck of the field gun are matched. The two cars can be connected to a four-wheeled carriage with a soft connection in the middle, so the four pairs of bearings just provide one cannon.

At present, Li Guodong's gun-making ability is unable to cast one cannon a day, so that the bearing output is higher than the demand of the gun truck, and the saved bearings can be considered installed on the supplies vehicles transporting grain.

The first gun truck and ammunition truck equipped with sliding bearings were all built. Then, under the command of Li Guodong, the craftsmen nailed the sheepskin layer by layer to the wheels. After the soft sheepskin was covered, they covered the outside of the sheepskin with a relatively hard cowhide, so that the cannon gun truck and ammunition truck of this cannon were all completed.

"Take the horses over and run for a while with the cart." Li Guodong asked the horses to lead.

The cannon cart is a twelve-pound field cannon cart. The ammunition truck is filled with stones to increase weight. Then Li Guodong sat in the ammunition truck himself, waved his whip, and drove away the horses.

The four horses led the ammunition truck and the cannon cart, and ran away with their hooves. The speed of running was very fast, which was almost the same as the speed of a war horse sprinting. The horses pulled the ammunition truck and the cannon cart to gallop at high speed on the dirt road. The wheels made of leather rubbed against the ground. It felt that the friction was very small, and the vehicle was much more stable when walking. Li Guodong personally sat on the ammunition truck to drive the horses. The vehicle ran very fast and was not as bumpy as the original cannon cart.

After Li Guodong's experiment, he jumped out of the ammunition truck and let all five people in a gun team get on the ammunition truck, driving the horses to pull the vehicle.

Five people sat on the ammunition truck, and the horses were running at a slow speed, pulling the ammunition truck and the cannon truck, and the wind and lightning were running on the grassland.

"There is no sound when the cannon car runs."

"Yes, it's still very stable. There's almost no bumps when sitting on it. It's much smoother than the carriage I used to ride."

"It's really a good car!"

The gunners were talking and praised this new type of cannon car.

After the traction test of the ammunition truck and gun truck was completed, Li Guodong asked someone to test the cannon to test whether the recoil of the cannon would break the axle or cause fatal damage to the bearing.

The gunners loaded up enough gunpowder and ignited the cannons. A twelve-pound shell whistled out, and the cannon truck just shook violently.
Chapter completed!