Arduino UNO + Tamiya twin gearbox + 298 H bridge. Please help.

Well - you can try to find another h-bridge. Or - you can replace the motors when they die:

Well, I'd go cheap and put sufficiently large reverse paired diodes on the motor leads to drop the voltage to the motors by ~.7v per diode pair. Not efficient, but could resolve the over voltage to the motor issues with just a stop by radio shack.