Or they have been driven insane by their new Italian mistress and she drove them to drink themselves to death. This is also a possibility.

Removing the EGR prior to purchase will not be possible. It (and all of its components) are buried at the back of the engine to greatly discourage tampering and removal.

I don't know what the story is with the soot in both my CRD engines. The EGR was disabled from the first week I owned it (starting at 30k miles) and lost engine #1 at 60k. I got the GDE eco tune with engine #2 which also had 60k miles on it, EGR remained disabled.

When I tore down engine #1 to scrap it (because the damned mechanic left it SITTING OUT IN THE RAIN for 2 months after I told them to save it for me to rebuild! ) there weren't any signs of oil plugging in the crank area, and the passages all seemed generally clean. The bearings however, had obviously been badly overheated and were in varying stages of melting out of their bores.

Engine #2 has not been torn down yet, the new owner says he will do this, and believes that it may be possible to return that block to operation. At least we will get to know what happened... Maybe.

My new vehicle is a 2003 TDI with 244k on it when I bought it, and BONE STOCK. The intake was not plugged (amazing) and the oil was black as coal dust. I promptly obtained a "racepipe" to remove / plug / disable the EGR, and changed the oil. After the first oil change, the oil remains translucent throughout the oil change life, and nearly clear on the dipstick for (a guess) about a thousand miles. This NEVER happened with the CRD, for reasons that I still do not understand. Two different engines, two different oil systems in those engines... No change in results.
Others on here have lost the bottom end of their engines as well, so this is not just an isolated problem with my engines.