Try hooking them together via the lan ports. I am assuming these devices have a AP mode and you have set them. In any case make sure the DHCP function is disabled on the 2 slave routers.
It should not make a difference but if you use the lan ports the traffic does not pass through the cpu. The lan ports are acting as a small switch which tends to be much faster than wan/lan traffic.
Still it should give you faster speeds. I would suspect a bad lan cable especially if it does this when you connect them lan-lan.