Howdy,
I have heard an honest 18,000 RPM from a saw motor only once. It was an SP-80 production saw, no mods, that had been sold in normal distribution to a logger, who had returned it to a dealer, who started it up, put it back in the box and returned it to McCulloch.
McCulloch in LA had set it up in their Eng. Lab. on a test stand, to show to a group of Manufacturer's reps from the industry lobby group, who were having a meeting in LA as guests of McCulloch. (I was in the group).
The crew at McCulloch put us all in the room and fired up the saw. After a very brief warm up, they firewalled the throttle. You should have seen the industry geniuses fighting for first through the door outa there! The sound was beyond belief. They had a strobe on the flywheel, with the cover cut away, and you could see the flywheel pulsate like it was jelly! I stood there and watched it like a ???? fool, almost by myself!
The story was it was an accidental stackup of tolerances that wound up in super tune condition. This is why no manufacturer will ever officially allow fooling with the port timing, by the way. If you happen to hit super tune, there is no theoretcal top end. She just winds up to grenade time. The original Stihl 050 would do this on occassion and I have vibratac'd them in the woods with loggers peaking at 17,000RPM. The Husky 180 could come close to 17,000, but the conrod would grow and allow the piston to hit the top of the cylinder. I saw this only once, at a dealer's shop. Not all saws of a model series would even come close to doing this. It required that stack-up of tolerances effect, so it was somewhat random for the given model.
Regards,
Walt Galer