It seemed that when my EGR was disabled I had increased blowby and more leaking around the breather hose and oil filler cap.

Is there any cause and effect there?
-shawn

Shouldn't be. The egr draws from the exhaust stream. Blowby is what gets past the rings and into the crankcase. If anything, blocking off the egr should slightly increase (by maybe less than 1%) the suction power of the intake on the blowby gases, because the intake flow needs to make up for the lack of egr gases.

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95 E320 Cabriolet, 169K