A friend of mine recently got a bike with an XRF8w hub and he mentioned that it is noisy in all gears above 3 or so.

I have one as well, and mine, too, is noisy in the higher gears.

I never had that experience with an XRF8, though (and I've had three).

So my question is, is the XRF8w always noisy, or are these two just defective? Does the noise ever go away? Mine has only about 2500 miles on it.

I haven't ridden it in two months since the frame broke, but I had the XRF8w in my Downtube 8H (it replaced the original non-W).

It was somewhat noisy in gear 4, and 6 if I remember correctly, and a little less so in 5,7,8.
Since it was direct drive in gear 1 and various combinations of 1/2/3 sets of gears in the other speeds, I presumed it was just normal mechanical noise. I had about 3000 miles on the gear.

Yeah, just the typical stage B gear whine.

Above 1st they are, after-all running thru different overdrive gear combinations..

This video will explain the noises, and why they change from gear to gear. When I re-assembled the hub, I dosed it with ATF to replace the grease. It's still noisy, but noticeably quieter and smoother than before.

the only thing worse than the noise is the weight of this hub. feels like pedaling with a lead weight attached to your wheel. and the gearing is too high. gears 5 thru 8 are practically useless. it desperately needs a lower gear range.

in a word, it sucks.

I think it's important to get gear 5 as your direct drive leaving you only 3 high gears. However, I'm not sure if SA recommends using a small chainring to do this. All hub gears are heavy and it's something you have to live with. This is why I prefer the SA 3 speed because it weights very little but I live with the friction loss.

Given this is the folding bike section.. a small wheel and a nearly same size cog on rear
19,21, or 23T listed, and a quite small chainring , as well .. like a 24 T, perhaps ?
may be what you need to bring the gear range down to useful ..

Big wheel already starts you off with a tall 1st gear..

It sounds to me like you have your bike geared wrong.

The reason this hub gets discussed in the folding bikes forum is that it is the ideal hub for a folding bike. If it is not ideal for other bikes, well, that is something to discuss in another forum.

I for one had no idea that internal hubs with so many overdrive gears existed before I saw this thread. Sounds like a cool piece of technology to have on a small wheeled bike.

I put an XRF5w on my Dahon Boardwalk and it seems to run pretty quiet in all gears. It also has plenty of range for my needs.

Oh, it is. I have logged about 18,000 miles on three of these (well, two were the earlier version) over the last five years.

The XRF5w is definitely nice and, I agree, quieter. I assume it makes for a very efficient transmission. But there's something special about the XRF8, because its closely spaced gears allow you to restrict your pedaling cadence to a very narrow range, which makes for more efficient pedaling. I like them both.

The middle 6 are closely and evenly spaced, but there is a big jump from 1st to 2nd, and from 7th to 8th.

Here's the way mine is set up, using Sturmey's FCS80 crank that was developed to go with the hub. It's geared 31-100 gear inches, in a very similar pattern and range to the millions of '10 speed' bikes sold during the 1960s and 70s. The weight of the various versions (actual, not advertised) is within pocket change one way or the other of Shimano's eight-speed hubs.

Mine is set up almost the same. 30/25 on 700 x 32c.