The solar wind disturbances during January 1--7 1978, are reconstructed by a modeling method. First of all, the interplanetary magnetic field background pattern, including a corotating shock, is reproduced using the Stanford source surface map. Then, two solar flares with their onset times on January 1, 0717 at 17 ¿S, 10 ¿E and 2147 UT at 17 ¿S, 32 ¿E, respectively, are selected to generate two interplanetary transient shocks. It is shown that these two shocks interacted with the corotating shock, resulting in a series of interplanetary events observed by four spacecraft, Helios 1 and 2, IMP 8, and Voyager 2. In particular, our simulation results show that these three shock waves interact and coalesce in interplanetary space such that Helios 2 and Voyager 2 observed only one shock and Helios 1 and IMP 8 observed two shocks. All shocks observed by the four spacecraft, except the corotating shock at Helios 1, are either a transient shock or a shock which is formed from coalescing of the transient shocks with the corotating shock. Our method is useful in reconstructing a very complicated chain of interplanetary events observed by a number of spacecraft. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1987