Again, not a diesel bike story but diesel related nonetheless, and probably downright boring.
A former co-worker had just bought a 1982 VW Rabbit (Golf to you across the Big Pond), this happened back around 1982. His wife was driving the car and stopped at a filling station to get gas. (This was back in the days when about 1/2 of the stations still had live attendants who would pump gas for you). The kid asked her "How much?" and she said "Fill 'er up". He pumped her near empty tank full of Diesel thinking that the Rabbit was a diesel! (He probably just finished reading a Road and Track article about the VW Diesels and figured he
knew what it was.) Believe it or not the car ran about 30 miles and got her home, smoking like heck. The next morning the car wouldn't start and her husband, being a pretty bright guy figured out what had happened. It cost him about $1000 to clean the tank, "dispose" of the "hazardous waste" diesel/gas mix
, and replace the catalytic converter and many other assorted parts. The warranty didn't cover it, but he eventually got the bill paid by the gas station.
When he came into work lamenting about the ordeal I commented that he should have bought a Diesel then this wouldn't have happened.
At another job a few years later one of the salesmen (who had 0% mechanical aptitude) had one of the ill-fated Oldsmobile Diesel V-8 sedans as a company car. He was out on a business trip late at night and almost out of fuel. The only gas station that was open only had gasoline and he figured that a few gallons wouldn't hurt. He managed to drive the car home but had totally ruined the engine by this time. Fortunately it was not his car, and the company bought him a new (gas) one.
This is one of the reasons we don't have many Diesel cars in the US today, from 1978 to about 1980 or so the US car companies made Diesels but the average wonks in the general public didn't know how to drive them or take care of them. Some companies like General Motors designed Diesels based on beefed-up gasoline engines, but they cut corners using cast crankshafts and cheap parts that didn't last long. Some companies used foreign engines (Lincoln used BMW diesels in their Continental and the Chevy Chevette used an Isuzu engine). I had a 1978 Chevy Diesel C-10 pickup truck, I was doing work for General Motors at the time and talked to their engineers that designed the engines. I took their advice on adding a good fuel filter and water separator, and used the correct oil. I changed oil every 3000 miles and took excellent care of the truck but only got 108,000 miles out of it before the crankshaft broke right where the engineer told me it was weak (flywheel flange).
, down the window goes then - oh s**t what do they really want 
I'm thinking!! Dude in the passenger seat yells out "Big end" to that I shake my head, but get that bunny caught in the headlights look 
SO THEN I think I'll have a little bit of fun whilst I'm seeing two very confused individuals looking on.
(All while still sitting on 80K's) a bit hard to hear much really with the bike rattling away.
