The chunk of cowling I found on New Year's eve gave me almost a complete cowl - it's only missing thirty-five cents - a chunk the size of a quarter and a chunk the size of a dime.

I decided this could be fixed with gorilla tape. Since the tape comes in colors, I got white tape for the white cowling, and black tape for the black base.

Step One was to re-position the mirror (again). I drilled yet another hole, and this time I finally got it pointed in the right location.

Several yards of tape later, the mirror is as good as new. Maybe not as pretty as new, but it works as good as new. Maybe when warm weather arrives I'll get a complete new mirror assembly, tear apart the door, and mount the new one.

My first car was a 12 year old Renault Dauphine. Dauphines were made from 1947 until 1964 or so. I'm told that the post-war Frenchman loved to tinker on his car. The Dauphine fit this need perfectly.

I really should have realized what I was getting into when I saw the little light mounted inside the engine compartment. A car that's equipped for after dark engine work should be a hint.

As a long-out-of-production, little known foreign car, parts weren't always easy to find. The local junkyard got used to seeing me tool up on my bicycle to strip parts off a junker. They started calling me whenever they got a new foreign car.

Despite the aid of the junk yard, and less frequent aid from the dealer, and a subscription to J. C. Whitney's "Replaces Original Perfectly" auto parts bible, I frequently needed to find substitutes for unavailable parts.

Tie rods connect the steering wheel to the front tires with a sort of ball-and-socket joint. These are what turns the wheels when you yank the steering wheel. They're kind of important. You need to keep them greased, so they don't rust, and you need a grommet to hold the grease in place and keep the road dirt out of the fragile parts.

As you might guess, the twelve-year-old rubber grommets on my new (to me) car had long since gone to their maker.

However, rolled up bicycle inner tube just exactly fit the space and served the purpose.

The Dauphine was a delicate creature, and instead of a requiring a torque wrench to fasten nuts so they wouldn't come loose, she had cute little triangular washers where you'd fold the tips up around the nut so it couldn't turn.

These gadgets are good for one use. When you pry the tips down to remove a nut, the tip falls off.

However, you can build new washers from a tin can, some metal sheers and a hand-drill.

My passengers got upset at seeing the road swishing by under their feet, so a friend and I paid a late-night visit to the county road commission dump and came back with a couple street signs.

Contrary to what you see in movies where kids have street signs in their dorm room, real street signs are big, heavy and very solid. Once I managed to saw one down to size and rivet it onto the remaining floorboards, nobody ever saw the road again.

Seeing the words "Dead End" didn't exactly reassure them, but at least there was no longer a breeze.

And so it went, replacing the rotted heater hose with dryer vent hose, getting a few actual replacement parts, running lots of new wires, etc.

I did a complete engine rebuild on the critter and had to learn to swear in both French and German to make sure the various parts understood me.

In the end, I kept it on the road for a year and a half - about 6, 000 miles. The second time a wheel fell off, I gave up. There's really no kludge to fix bad bearing races.

So, gorilla tape aside, my current car is no-where near the kind of jury-rigging I've used in the past to keep a car running.