This RC Basher Has a Motor in Every Wheel — and It’s Completely UnhingedThe central motor, the driveshafts, the differentials, the gearbox – all of it gone. A YouTube channel called Do RC has put together what it describes as the first true direct-drive RC basher, and the outcome is every bit as bizarre and impressive as the premise suggests.The concept is pretty straightforward in theory: mount a brushless outrunner motor at each corner and bolt the wheel directly to the spinning outer bell of the motor, cutting out every mechanical intermediary between the power source and the ground. Outrunners are already the standard motor architecture in drone propulsion – the outer rotor spins while the inner stator stays fixed – which makes them a logical candidate for this application. Whether they could hold up to the punishment of RC bashing was an entirely separate problem.The build ran in two stages. First came a proof-of-concept using a 1/8-scale Arrma Fury fitted with small drone motors, custom 3D-printed PETG wheels bonded to TPU tires in a single multi-material print on a Snapmaker U1, and a pair of Castle Cobra 10 ESCs. The host was upfront about the risk:AdvertisementAdvertisement"There aren't already motors designed to do this and we're going to be using drone motors, which I'm not sure are going to survive the stress or the environment we're going to be putting them through." The motors did not survive. Failure came fast, and the host acknowledged it was hardly surprising given how far the hardware was pushed beyond its intended purpose.The Full Build Uses Heavy-Lift Drone Motors and Eight HorsepowerFor the Arrma Notorious V6 – a 1/6-scale six-wheel-drive platform stripped down to accept the new layout – the host moved to XOAR Titan T8115 100KV outrunners, heavy-lift motors rated for multicopters carrying serious payload. Each unit weighs 451 grams, measures 88.6mm across, runs a 20mm shaft, and produces a continuous 1,613 watts. With four of them running off an 8S LiPo through Rhino 80A ESCs flashed with AM32 open-source firmware, the theoretical combined output lands north of eight horsepower. Per the XOAR product specs, the T8115 series is designed for multirotor platforms lifting between 15 and 70 kilograms depending on configuration – these are not hobby motors with delusions of grandeur.The mounting solution required genuine engineering. The motor flanges needed custom adapters to mate with the Notorious's knuckles, and 3D-printed PCTG prototypes confirmed the geometry before the final parts went to PCBWay for CNC machining in 7075 aluminum. The total came to just over $300 for eight pieces – around $200 above what the raw materials cost alone, which pencils out to less than ten dollars per hour of labor equivalent when set against the roughly 32 hours a hobbyist-grade CNC machine would have demanded. The host found that math fairly convincing, and it's hard to argue with.Control runs through a FlySky G11P transmitter with a built-in tank-steer mix, dedicating one channel to the left-side motors and the other to the right. That setup enables spinning on the spot at full throttle, which the host described as "one of the craziest things I've ever seen" – and the grass it left behind made a reasonable case for that assessment.AdvertisementAdvertisementWhat nobody anticipated was the silence. Strip out the gearbox and you strip out the gear noise. At speed, the only sound is tire contact with the ground. "Because it has no gear train, it makes no noise," the host noted on camera. "That's really weird." With all four wheels driven independently at matching speeds, there's also no front-wheel lift under hard acceleration – "that true four-wheel drive means you don't really get any ballooning in the front as all four of the tires are spinning at the same speed and get the same power." In his telling, the vehicle drove like nothing he had experienced with a conventional RC setup.There are open problems. Low-speed cogging showed up during the proof-of-concept phase and was only partially addressed through AM32 tuning when the full build came together. Unsprung weight from four 451-gram motors is substantial, and the suspension arms are a known weak point. The finished vehicle is, by the host's own admission, wider than it is long – "it looks pretty goofy" – which creates clearance concerns during jumps. And the project is explicitly unfinished: the host has offered to transfer the whole thing to a community member willing to take it further.Whether or not this scales into something practical, it already works. That wasn't guaranteed.