Those who know me, know how important it is to me having a neat car. Of course you can imagine the challenge for me to step into the cab with sludgy boots on brand new and clean foot mats. Meanwhile I agree that rubber mats have a right to exist.

But there is no time for sensitivities. The next exercise is waiting for me: driving uphill a steep slope.

At first I have to drive up just two third of the hill, stop, engage the rear gear and reverse downhill with gear reduction, no clutch, no brakes. Next step is to drive uphill right to the top. A straight hill and a straight trace but the truck drifts uphill to the left and the right. Now I should keep the tires straight. It’s everything but easy. Instinctively I try to counteract the sideways movement of the truck. Instructor Volker, the wise voice on the passenger seat, gave me the caring advice: „You see the letters MAN on your wheel? Just keep it straight so that you can read it.“ I understand the theory but it makes me feeling a bit frightened.
If you don’t keep the wheel straight you run the risk of driving the truck with full speed into the direction the tires are aligned to as soon they’re getting grip to the ground. In the worst case it’s the slope, a tree or a rock face but definitely it’s not straight uphill.

With the new exercise I am expected to drive downhill into the slope right after a narrow left turn. For a start I am using clutch and brakes. As soon as all tires are positioned straight in the slope I’ve got to remove my feet from clutch pedal and brake pedal just using the engine brake to drive downhill. Now it happens. During this maneuver I bring up the clutch pedal too fast, the clutch grips abruptly and suddenly there is a terrible smell in the air. The clutch can no longer be activated. And now? Will we be able to reactivate it? First experiments don’t succeed.

After the first „shock“ the problem is solved quite easily. MAN service hotline is informed. Volker, the instructor, tows the truck with his Unimog from sludgy ground to tarmac. Service technician Benny arrives an hour later and quickly diagnoses a bad damage of the clutch. Another hour later the towing service arrives and tows the truck to the garage only 15 km away from where we are. There we get a replacement car for driving to Nuremberg and within two days we can pick up our truck again clean, ready to go and equipped with a new clutch. Would it have been the same in the deserts of Morocco?

By the way the clutch didn’t break down due to the exercise I did the moment before it broke down. Experts say there already must have been something wrong with the clutch before. Trucks like this one are constructed especially for extreme off-road conditions and are able to resist a lot more. We’re happy that the clutch broke down here instead of in the middle of nowhere. So the repair wasn’t a big trouble and was quite comfortably done.