I saw lots of the damage, I am/was also a mechanic. We lost one pickup motor on a rig an employee HAD to drive to work. I've never seen anything like how those cylinder walls were polished. My original plan was to leave the bore alone and just knurl the pistons to take up the 0.003 overbore. But I couldn't hone the cylinders so I had to take the block to a machinist to have it bored 0.010 over and put in new pistons.
We actually heated some of the ash with a big torch and produced glass beads. Sort of pretty green color.