clutch burning smell

It may have a slightly pressureised slave cylinder that releases after a couple of presses of the pedal.
Try pumping the clutch pedal a dozen times after you start the car and see if it does it then when you do the reverse forward thing.
If it was on the way out it would do it all the time. or slip when you put your boot into it when driving.

Cheers
Dave

A quailty clutch kit would be $400-500 and about 5-7 hrs labour. You may need to get the flywheel machined,$60.
You wont have much left out of a grand.

(For the last couple of days the clutch on my 78 fj40 smells in the first or reverse gear momentarily and it seems to be all good after that no slipping or loss of power that I can feel.)

Simple answer there...a gearbox is a torque multiplier from the highest gear down to 1st gear, and reverse is even a lower speed (higher) ratio than 1st gear, so I would suggest that you do have clutch/pressure plate slippage in 1st and reverse, and that is the gears that have the most torque multiplication from the engine crankshaft/flywheel.

Time for a new clutch kit and flywheel maching I think.

Thanks for all the replies, I'll give the pumping a shot see how that goes, I am not sure if it'll take me through the holiday break or not.
I am hoping to have a bit of fun during the X-mas break.

I am starting to have the same conclusion, last thing I want is to get stock in the middle of nowhere specially when I have had a bit of warning before hand, I am gonna ring around for pricing and availability, not the best time of the year for this sort of job I guess.