Wireless and wired networking conflict?

[brewwizard-1]

In my garage I have connected two Linux machines to an old router just so I can ssh and do file transfers - no internet access. I have configured manual ip addresses for the wired network cards in each machine (192.168.1.3 and 192.168.1.13), and lets call this old router connecting them router #3 (192.168.1.100). No problem. I can ssh and do file transfers.

For internet access I have wireless for each of the same machines and I'm using DHCP to assign ips for the wireless devices and i'm using WEP security. Also works fine.

So I have internet access and I can simultaneously ssh BUT what I cant figure out is this:

When the wired connections are disabled/unplugged I can ping my wireless routers or I can use firefox to get the router configurations:

router #1 (the "primary" router connected to my isp, LAN ip is 192.168.1.1 and DHCP server enabled), and router #2 (a "secondary" router i'm using as a wireless access point, LAN ip 192.168.1.6. DHCP disabled).

Then when I activate the wired connection for the two machines through router #3 (192.168.1.100, and not connected to the other LAN) I can no longer ping the wireless routers or get the config pages.

Why the !$*% does that happen??? I'm just not knowledgeable enough about this networking stuff - what am I missing???

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

THANKS!