As of this year new MOT regulations forbid the remapping of vehicles,whether remapping your car will damage your clutch depends on how you drive it.

It will depend upon the amount of torque it puts out when remapped.

Had my pd130 remapped about 15k miles ago (now 60k) and I need a new clutch despite driving it fairly sympathetically! However it was remapped to about 350lbft which is too much for the standard clutch.

Replacement Sachs organic clutch booked for fitting in a couple of weeks - about £800. I would ask if it's really worth remapping, but if you do be prepared to accept the extra costs of doing it.

If you're planning to keep the car for years then I would advise against it. It is common practice here in Germany, but several friends have had early turbo failure / gearbox problems / clutch failure as well as sharply increased fuel consumption for a couple of them. Note the computer reading didn't change, but the real consumption did. We think one of the remappers altered the OBC settings* to show improved fuel economy, even though the reverse was true.

Steven Quas , Hamburg

* In the hidden service menus on several cars (accessed via certain button presses) there is a scaling figure allowing the user to scale the economy figure up or down.