8 cell with 2 stock motors overheating Super Rooster?

[oIIIIIo]

I've got a Clod crawler currently setup as a basher Monster Truck for my kids. They're more interested in doing donuts than crawling, so the speed is just about right with the stock motors (connected parallel) and gearing with a 8 cell battery. However, this combo is making the Novak SR run very hot. After about 5 minutes, I can't touch the heat sinks. From what I can tell from the Novak specs it should handle this combo, but I'm concerned that I'm going to fry my good SR.

Any suggestions on how to get similar performance without frying my ESC? Would switching to 55T motors slow it down too much? I've got a spare Traxxas EVX ESC. Would that ESC with a CC BEC handle the power better than the SR?