The sleeve in my 85 and 86 Husky's and 69 and 76 Ts Suzuki's look to be satisfactory and have done exactly what they were designed for for a very very long time.
If you want to use that logic then where are all the early chrome bore Kawasaki's ?
A couple of points:
1. Both those bikes were designed to have sleeves. The barrel was probably cast around the sleeve, ensuring far better heat transfer than any pressed-in sleeve.
2. Your Swedish bikes probably have an exceptionally good quality bore in them. Your Japanese commuter bikes have been saved by the fact that they make virtually no HP.
3. Kawasaki's Electrofusion bores were often needlessly replaced. They
look like crap fairly early in their lives, but are still entirely servicable - and far too many mechanics (both amateur and professional) assumed they were buggered when they were actually about 10% of the way through their useful lifespans.
I'm done with steel bores. They wear out too fast, they cost too much money to rebore, and too many piston oversizes are hard to get. They may be more forgiving of sezures and dust-munching, but its been a while since I was stupid enough to let either of those things happen.
On the topic of oversizes, be aware that plenty of sleeves are offered with only two oversizes of piston, so it's not like the old days where you'd get stock, +0.25, +0.50, +0.75, +1.00, +1.50 and +2.00mm (and maybe +1.25mm and +1.75mm) oversize pistons...
