Exactly. Why I never encounter plasma sprayed coatings in my machine shop (and hope I never do, I do know with snowmobile Nikasal sprayed cylinder bores, breaching the coated cylinder bores, renders the cylinder as junk. They may or may not operate normally for a time but over the long haul, they loose the ability to create adequate compression to ignite the mixture because the sprayed coating looses it's sealing ability. Nickasil is nothing but a production technique to lower mass production costs and it provides a more efficient and quicker heat transfer method, rather than a steel pressed in cylinder liner., far as I know at least.
Like I stated above, I have very rarely encountered any sprayed on (plasma sprayed coatings) in the shop other than sled cylinders for my personal stuff and I've always just replaced the cylinders per the OEM instructions.
Outta my ballpark mostly on it except to say any plasma coating is very thin in the 0.002-0.004 range so any 'honing' of it (no matter what type of hone you employ) will compromise the coating layer and most likely will compromise the coating somewhere and will most likely it will be at the transition point where the port edges intersect the bore itself because no matter what type of hone you use (ball or fixed stone) you use, when the hone encounters the port, the spring pressure on the stones or the wire spring pressure on the honing balls will try to push them into the ports and compromise the plating at the edges of the ports because of that action. I do possess both fixed stone on spring loaded arms as well as ball hones, fine and course but I've never honed any 2 stroke cylinders except small engine 4 strokes and then only to remove glazing and carbon rings at the top of the piston stroke on a rebuild and in my view, any hone, ball or fixed on arms is still a cutting tool.
Back when I raced sleds (I owned an AC Thunder Cat lake racer and of course to get maximum power, we always ran it on the ragged edge of lean and more than one time had metal transfer from running too hot and had to remove aluminum piston material from the piston that stuck to the Nikasil coated bores, and we used easy off oven cleaner and a sharp steel pick, another story for another time and not here and the very lightly honed the coated bore to remove any high spots that could impact compression sealing during piston travel, so long as the ring wasn't stuck in the piston groove that is which always entailed a new slug and a new cylinder, but always a very light and careful honing, we could get by with doing that and believe me, we went through a lot of cylinders and pistons anyway.
Remember we always jetted for maximum power and speed and the engine always ran tuned expansion chambers which is not the norm on any chainsaw that I know of, chainsaws use really inefficient but quieter mufflers that are basically incapable of scavenging exhaust gases from a cylinder in the first place, You can 'hog out a muffler' to attempt at scavenging exhaust gases (and make any saw obnoxiously loud) but no can muffler will efficiently scavenge exhaust gas like a tuned to the exhaust stroke pulse like a true expansion chamber can and will.
If anyone is interested, I have a pile of 2 stroke Artic Cat race parts as well as stock parts scattered around the shop collecting dust. I got out of sleds many years ago, got to be too expensive and too dangerous for this old man. Something about running 150 plus on a frozen lake, while it really boots your testosterone levels can kill you in a flash. I also have a few sets of Artic Cat racing leathers and race helmets in good condition that I'd like to get rid of. Tee shirts and items as well. I believe I even have carbide track stud sets, Woody's was one of our sponsors and I got a lot of go fast parts from them. I do know I have a new set of stingers in the box, never used for a 1000 TC upstairs, those are OEM Black Magic. I'd give most of it away for free if anyone has a use for it actually. I don't, just dust collectors now.
