Pitchbend Wheel - is there a disable feature?

Pitch bend is not a CC, it is a separate message. So if you're looking for CC data in your DAW you won't find it!

The Status bytes of 0x80 to 0xEF are for messages that can be broadcast on any one of the 16 MIDI channels. Because of this, these are called Voice messages. (My own preference is to say that these messages belong in the Voice Category). For these Status bytes, you break up the 8-bit byte into 2 4-bit nibbles. For example, a Status byte of 0x92 can be broken up into 2 nibbles with values of 9 (high nibble) and 2 (low nibble). The high nibble tells you what type of MIDI message this is. Here are the possible values for the high nibble, and what type of Voice Category message each represents:

8 = Note Off
9 = Note On
A = AfterTouch (ie, key pressure)
B = Control Change
C = Program (patch) change
D = Channel Pressure
E = Pitch Wheel

If your DAW lets you see all MIDI msgs, look for a Voice msg with E in the high nibble.

As far as disabling pitch bend, it is possible to set the bend range to 0 but that is on a per patch basis not global.

You didn't say whether the bender just stopped working or it never worked.

Good luck!