hey man , i feel your pain.
i have been threw that with my savage on 6 cell lipo.

my summit shares many or the same parts in the diff and had the same type of clicking noise from the rear , it was the plastic case had cracked and would only show only a hairline crack when disassembled.

and yes if your tires are heavy from water in the foams , causeing a terrible unbalance it will be real hard on stuff.
but if they are just lightly unbalaced it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

i would try and put a real light weight set of tires with small nubs so you loose alot of the traction ... until more metal parts come out for the diffs.