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RE: This has puzzled us and the mechanic.

He's not much of a mechanic I'm afraid as there's not much of a puzzle here to work out. The reason is because the towing vehicle has a gearbox containing many forward gears which could be 5 or 6 and towing forward you can apply the gear change to the correct gear required under the application. ie. climbing hills etc. and you travel much faster too. Your vehicle only has just one reverse gear so there's more stress on the gearbox and because you are manouvering much slower you tend to slip the clutch and this is what causes the burn smell. It's the clutch friction plate not making fully contact with the flywheel and to put it to context it's like rubbing your hand fast against an object. The more you rub the hotter it gets and exactly the same principle applies here. It's called friction.

If you have a deisel there is no need to rev. The engine will just trundle gently backwards once the clutch is released easing the van into position. This avoids any potential "burn". Quite often see drivers revving hard when reversing their deisel to get the van on to a pitch.

Phil

Your mechy is asking if the brakes on your van could be sticking, a very responsible question, if your reving the boll07ks out of it to make the van move it's either the van brakes sticking or operator error, I suspect the later, it's easy to do on a petrol engine.

Either way it will lead to clutch failure again.

My OH asked if its a diesel and if you are using your clutch when reversing ?

He said change into reverse then get your foot off the clutch and just let the car trundle .

Perfect reason to buy an auto