Someone needs to open a tutoring thread. You guys need to teach the rest of us what you are talking about
Back when engine blocks were Iron, and the rings were Iron.... the rings wore away the cylinder walls at a fairly slow rate. But over time, the rings would wear, and expand.... the open end of the 'C' would spread as the cylinder bore opened up. Round cylinders ofter took on an oval profile with high mileage. This is why cars in the 50's and 40's tended to smoke a lot.
All of that was acceptable and considered typical. Emissions controls, better mfg processes, etc., changed all that.
The advent of aluminum engine blocks introduced accelerated cylinder wall wear. Iron scrubs away aluminum much more quickly. Iron sleeves were added, by pressing the cylinder liners into the aluminum blocks. Durability was very nearly the same as iron/iron. You could even replace the liners, with thinner units, to increase the bore, there by increasing engine displacement.... Same as you could bore an Iron block.
The solution is not ideal..... the difference in expansion rates between Iron and Aluminum can cause issues with sealing. And it's a complex fiddly process which is labor intensive. Not ideal for motorcycle applications. Those two different media also conduct heat at different rates.... heat transfer is not as good with the media change.
BMW(I believe) went to plating the bores of their aluminum cylinders first, with a nickel - silica compound (hence Nikacil) first...... the iron rings now ride on a plated surface that is somewhere above 1000 grit sandpaper, that is bonded directly to the aluminum. Very tough and durable. The spaces between the silica bits hold the oil film the rings have to have to make the thing work.
Around this time, the race was on to make the most compact engine you could..... the spacing between cylinders kept getting tighter and tighter, until there really isn't a whole lot of metal between the cylinder bores, any more. 'Siamesed' bores have become popular...... when you go to plating the aluminum, you don't need to have enough material to support the liner being pressed in..... and you don't need to leave enough metal to allow for an over bore or two, as the plating is tough enough to last the 'life' of the engine. Water cooling is efficient enough, that you can have very little surface area, and still dump enough of the heat into the coolant.
Soooooo, back to our man Wolfie...... is 2mm on each bore too much? Is that diameter, or radius? (I think Diameter...) How much metal do you remove between cylinder pairs? Can the block support (potentially) 4 mm thinner walls, between bores? We already know there is not enough meat there to bore it all the way out to 750cc...... our intrepid engineers at Yamaha would have already done that, if they could....... But how many
more mm would it take, spread across 4 cylinders to do it?