In 1992, a small village owner became the richest man in the village by owning a car.

Chapter 445 Boring Cylinder and Grinding Shaft
There is a type of shop that specializes in cylinder boring and crankshaft grinding. Cylinder boring and crankshaft grinding are two important items in engine overhaul, involving the repair of the inner wall of the engine cylinder and the crankshaft, respectively.

Cylinder boring refers to machining the inner wall of an engine cylinder to increase its diameter and improve its surface finish, ensuring a tight fit between the cylinder wall and the piston rings.

Yu Dawei took the tile to a lathe and machined it. It's essentially the same principle: to make the originally thick tile thinner.

Of course, although Yu Da has the skills to make his own cars, he is definitely not as good as those master craftsmen who can actually bore cylinders and grind shafts, so he mainly goes there to inquire about the situation.

If rolling up the tiles is really difficult, he has a second solution.

In previous years, Luhe Town did not have this kind of lathe technology. After all, the place was not only remote, but also had backward production capacity. Before Yu Dawei opened the repair shop, the place mainly focused on repairing agricultural machinery.

Since Yu Dawei opened Fanfan Repair Shop, many farm machinery repair shops felt that only repairing farm machinery was beneath them, so they all changed their names to something like "So-and-so Machinery Repair Shop".

They can repair all kinds of things, including cars, farm machinery, and excavators.

As for cars or excavators that people bring over broken machines, they're not afraid, since there are really skilled repairmen in the town now.

If you can't fix it yourself, you can simply refer the customer to Fanfan Repair Shop.

So in the period after the New Year, many excavators and cars that couldn't be repaired inexplicably came to Fanfan Repair Shop.

But this also gave those farm machinery repairmen some experience in repairing cars and construction machinery. They would occasionally come to see what was going on, and their progress was very fast.

That's not all. The reason why Luhe Town gradually shifted towards the machinery industry was also due to the price war waged by Qin Yourong, which turned Luhe Town into a sea of ​​cheap spare parts.

Many repairmen from neighboring counties or towns will come here to buy parts, partly because it's close by, and partly because the prices are similar to those in the oil city.

This trend of repairing machinery and finding parts centers continued to circulate, leading to the opening of two cylinder boring and shaft grinding shops in Luhe Town.

These two shops do nothing but bore cylinders and grind shafts for engines of various machines. Of course, lathes can do more than just that; sometimes they can also machine screws and other special parts.

One of them wasn't far from where Yu Dawei was. He turned left after leaving the machinery rental market and walked for another five minutes towards Old Man Yang's sheep farm.

The place was an old, dilapidated hut outside Old Yang's house, built in the style of rammed earth, with two old wooden doors that opened at an angle, and no signboard above the door.

It was just a white vertical strip with four characters written on it in red paint: "Borehole Grinding Shaft".

Yu Dawei stood at the doorway, holding a pile of tiles, and glanced inside. Inside the room were two different machines and all sorts of miscellaneous steel tools, quite complete.

But I didn't see anyone.

"Is Master Liao home?" Yu Dawei didn't dare to step inside.

When he bought mutton before, Old Man Yang told him that this Liao, who came from out of town, had a bad temper and liked to act crazy when he drank. It seemed that he hadn't come to town to stay with his relatives.

The other person also seemed to have no children. Old Man Yang also said that this person had lived in Luhe for a period of time and knew him, but had not returned for decades.

Given Old Man Yang's stingy nature, he would never have let the other party stay in the house in front of his house for free.

But this time, he genuinely showed kindness. Seeing that the extremely destitute Master Liao had nowhere to live, he gave him the house next to the sheep pen, which he usually used as a hay barn.

"Yes." A hoarse, deep voice came from the slightly dark room.

It's like the broken voice produced by a throat that has been poisoned, making people feel uncomfortable subconsciously after hearing it.

"Bore the cylinder or grind the shaft?"

Inside the house, another wooden door was pushed open, and an old man with bare chest and cloth shoes walked out. His skin was tanned from the sun and he was very thin.

Although the old man's hair was messy and he was unkempt, his eyes were very clear, without the cloudiness that comes with old age.

After all, they're in the business of boring cylinders and grinding shafts; if their eyesight isn't good, it will inevitably be much more difficult for them.

"Master Liao, could you take a look at this tile and see if you can trim a line or two off it?" Yu Dawei carried the tile he was carrying into the house.

Upon entering, Yu Dawei discovered that the small room, less than 30 square meters, was filled with old tools and accessories. Through the inner room door, he could see a simple spring bed and a red lacquered cabinet, but there seemed to be no place to cook.

Life has been rather bleak lately.

It seems even worse than when I lived alone in my previous life.

"Let me see." The old man reached out and took a tile. He glanced at it first, but felt the light was too dim, so he walked a few steps to the door and looked at it in the sunlight.

"New?" "New. Just arrived. The model number says 350, but it's much thicker than the tiles we took off." Yu Dawei explained briefly.

“It’s a waste to turn such a good piece of material, and it’s not necessarily a problem with the tile.” Master Liao put the tile back into Yu Dawei’s arms and opened his dry, cracked lips again. “Turning the tile is not as good as turning the axle. It’s easier to remove a few ridges.”

"Hmm, that's fine too." Yu Dawei had originally thought that if the tile couldn't be turned into a wheel, grinding the axle would be acceptable, but judging from the other party's words, they seemed to prefer grinding the axle.

To be honest, he would feel quite reluctant to sell a few new roof tiles, since they weren't cheap.

After making up his mind, Yu Dawei returned to Fanfan Repair Shop and, with a few people, used a small trailer to pull the crankshaft all the way to Master Liao's doorstep.

The hand-pushed trolley was welded by Yu Dawei. He needs to move various parts when repairing cars, so the hand-pushed trolley is an essential product.

Yu Dawei welded four at once. Some of the raw materials came from Brother Duan's scrap metal recycling station, and some were bought from hardware stores, such as pulleys.

However, ever since the maintenance equipment from the oil city equipment factory was brought over, their factory no longer lacks these kinds of flatbed trucks for transporting parts.

That's not just a flatbed truck, it's something like a forklift. The handlebars can be raised by pressing up and down.

My buddies and I use this for repairing cars all the time; it also has a professional name – "earth bull".

"Bring it in." When Master Liao saw the group of people bringing the crankshaft over, he glanced at Yu Dawei and probably guessed where they came from.

With so many young mechanics, they must be from the repair shop next door.

Master Liao got up and went in first, turning on the lights in the room, making the whole room much brighter than before.

“This shaft… has been tampered with many times before.” Master Liao had someone lift the crankshaft onto the machine and ran his finger over it several times. “Fortunately, the shaft itself is in good condition, otherwise this shaft would have been unusable long ago.”

Yu Dawei stood to the side, head down, silently watching the place the other person was touching. He hadn't paid much attention at first, but now, upon closer inspection, he indeed saw the marks left after the repairs.

"So this thing can still be used, right?" Yu Dawei's heart was pounding as he asked the question; a crankshaft is no small sum.

"It's usable, so stop crowding around in the room. My little room can't hold so many people. You should all go out first." Master Liao glanced helplessly at the group, thinking they really had no sense of propriety at all.

Yu Dawei glanced at the apprentices, waved his hand, and then followed them out, quite tactfully.

Then I heard a loud noise from the machine running.

Yu Dawei subconsciously squatted down under the shade of a tree by the door, quietly listening to the noise around him; the sound was all too familiar.

Several times when I needed special screws for car repairs, I would drive out of the mountains to find a place that could bore cylinders and grind shafts, all for the sake of a few broken screws or broken valves.

Driving alone in the mountains can be quite overwhelming, with a strong sense of loneliness enveloping you.

"How are you newcomers settling in at the factory lately?" Yu Dawei put aside his distractions and glanced at the newly recruited apprentices.

The four people in front of me were all recruited in the last two weeks. They are all from nearby villages under Luhe Town and do not attend school.

The youngest one is even younger than Duan Xiaowu. Yu Dawei does not plan to hire teenagers under the age of 18. In the future, anyone under the age of 18 will be considered a child laborer.

Yu Dawei vaguely remembers that it was after 2002 that the government finalized the decision that teenagers under the age of eighteen could not be employed to work.

He simply did it ahead of time.

But when the parents found out that they wouldn't accept the eggs because the child was too young, they traveled a long way with two baskets of eggs and almost knelt down before Lao Ji and Yu Dawei.

They then started talking about the other person's younger siblings going to school, which made Yu Dawei unable to hold back any longer.

Ultimately, they had to relax the requirements: they wouldn't hire anyone under fifteen, but those between fifteen and eighteen years old had to have their parents sign a consent form to stay in the factory as apprentices.

Otherwise, Yu Dawei would have resolutely refused to accept them, and in the end, he didn't even take the two baskets of eggs.

He lived through this period in his previous life and knows the living conditions in the villages in the 1990s; poverty was the label for most people.

"Boss, our repair shop is great! We can even eat meat while working here. I don't get to eat meat even once a year at home." A dark-skinned young man approached Yu Dawei with a smile, his eyes shining.

Countless people in the village envy him for being able to work and learn at Fanfan's repair shop. His parents say that once he gets in and learns a skill, he'll never starve.

He believes in it and studies hard every day, much more diligently than when he was in school. After all, he can now take things apart and put them back together, instead of just sitting there daydreaming.

(End of this chapter)