20/02/2026
Breaking down is part of life when you run old cars, but taking a 35 year old car into the middle of the Sahara with no support and then racing it might be close to madness. We loved it.
The only way to really experience the wilds of African Sahara is to be stranded and have to find a way to keep going. I would suggest losing the fuel pump in the middle of Mauritania is up there with as far from help as you can find yourself, but we soldiered on.
Two big failures of note, losing our transfer box and therefore all drive in Western Sahara and losing the fuel pump in Mauritania. Amazingly we carried a spare transfer box as had warned us of impending failure so a Moroccan workshop worked through the night to keep us moving.
The fuel pump was more of a McGuivre affair, we magpied around the bivouac pinching parts off fellow competitors such as and until we had something resembling a working fuel system to propel us to Dakar.
Our final visit from the f**k up fairy was when a coolant hose burst, and we drove on innocently for nearly 20kms wondering what the new chemical burning smell was as coolant pi**ed all over our exhaust…Thank God for incredible radiator which demonstrated extraordinary ability to keep the engine cool despite dribbles of coolant. Without the exceptional radiator we would have totally destroyed the engine, so thank you to the Allisport team for keeping us moving and the amusing noises from the header tank when I added a bottle of water when it was clearly well above 100 degrees!
Sadly the blown hose lead to a blown head gasket, so our competitive run came to an end. But determined to finish we nursed the old Range Rover all the way to Dakar.
