CM871 mistake

[Cross Eyed]

Hey all, this is a bit of a "I did a stupid" post/question. Perhaps a cautionary tale for others:

We bought a 2009 International Paystar 5900i a few years ago with an ISX15 -allegedly hopped up CM871 with "485hp, good for 550 with a better cam" from an owner-operator, the truck had 700K on it, and still does since the Odometer failed...but that's a whole other problem.

This truck has actually been pretty solid for us besides the entire Engine harness being a rat's nest, diff exploding, etc etc.

I realize now we shouldn't have bought this basket case, but it's what we have and we aren't in the position to go buy a new rig. The EGR/DPF were intact until last week, when we may have or may not have unplugged and removed the DPF as a whole because my driver was complaining the truck had a horrible fuel smell "randomly" (Regen, I think) throughout the day, it got to the point where he was too sick to drive the truck, (we could never duplicate the problem though). We tried everything that we could think of, inspected everything and could not find any issues, and so we just threw a hail mary and ripped the DPF off. The truck ran great! no smell, driver was thrilled, for a few days, then as you can imagine... The Truck went into limp mode. Go figure.

So, with my tail between my legs, I am going to have my fabricator repair the exhaust and we are going to remount the DPF... Which leads me to my question, I have Zero history on the engine or Emissions, Should we spend the $$$ on a Filter cleaning at the dealer, throw it back on, and hope the smell goes away? Maybe the filter was plugged? Can a plugged filter cause the fuel smell/Fumes in the cab? or should we consider de-mandating the DPF system?

Side note: I did find some really nice write ups for all the different sensors and egr tune ups (thank you) so if the smell is there, we will tear into all of that.