[Power Surge]

I share the same feeling as Woodz428. I have been involved with the motorcycle industry for a long time (my brother has been a bike shop service manager for almost 20 years) and I have never seen a bike that had that setup. Mind you, my experiance has been with american V-twins, which always used sleeves. I have gotten into metric V-twins over the past few years, they use sleeves as well.

And to be completely honest, I have been doing high peformance auto work for many years, and this is the first I've even heard of this, and I'm no newbie. It can't be THAT common.

I would definitely have concerns over having a coated cylinder wall, vs a sleeve. At least with a sleeve, you can replace it. Even if the coating holds up, if there is any kind of engine failure (such as a dropped valve) and you damage the cylinder wall, is the block then junk? If you have a sleeve, you'd just replace the sleeve.

I'm not saying the coating is bad, but my personal feeling is that if I spent $5k on a block, I'd feel way better about it if it had some nice Darton sleeves in it.