nitro fiend

I took my volcano out today in the snow and everything was working fine until I noticed the front wheels were not spinning anymore. So I look at it closer and it is spinning the dogbone to the front gear box but not to the wheel doggone. could my gears be stripped out? Are they plastic?
EDIT: So apparently when the front wheels stopped spinning it's because the front dogbones had bind on the fact that there is too much play between the carrier and gear box, therefore exploding the gears inside the gear box. My question now is how do I prevent this from happening again? Also I had read somewhere that I could use a small piece of gas line which I did. It didn't seem to help.