Tony,
This looks looks like I'm seeing tooling marks. BUT, you said that the person saw them hone it, so that rules that theory out. This cylinder looks good about3/4 of the diameter and that might be why it feels good when you move the top of the piston back and forth.
Do you by chance have a mill that you can bolt the block down to the table and swing an indicator? If so, dail in the bore in the middle (where ever you think there is minimun wear, of the bore)
Then check the very top of the cylinder with the indicator without moving the mill table, it should have an area near the very top where the rings have never touched or have worn due to that the top piston ring doesn't go all the way to the top. There should be maybe at least an 1/8 inch there. Thus, should be an origainl factory machine area and "dead nuts" in the center of the original bore. UNLESS, the ring groove or some call it a ridge groove had been removed too when it was re-bored. Compare the two reading
From the picture the area I am talking about looks like it "MAY" be original. I have seen times where some people try to just hone a real worn and already out of round cylinder and this leaves it way out of round along with taper in the bore, then they can't get a new set of rings to seat in, if they do it doesn't last long. this might be the case here.
Like most, I machine the bore first to "straightened out" the bore and leave a few thousanths to hone out to take off any "hi's" left behind by the machining and then to smooth up the finish and give it that cross-hatch mark.
My guess is If the did indeed machine the cylinder, they machined it out of center and hit it with a hone and sent it on it's merry way. I have seen it done in other "SO-CALLED" machine shops before. I have even seen it go as far as running a bead hone or some call them a ball hone through em. I usually only use these type of hones to break any glazing due to a poor break-in.
Let us know, this has me wondering, but I still think it's "out of center" and/or "out of round"
Good luck,
John
