AP still beacons, but no channel

[notmybest2day]

I have a Linksys WRT54G ver.8 router with most recent firmware and every so often it acts up and does strange things.  When I pull 10-50gb through it over a week or so, the signal strength goes from ~60% to disconnected in about 20 seconds and then comes back after 1-4 minutes.  It will hold at ~60% for a few minutes and do it again.

Eventually, it stops doing the cycle and just never comes back.  Using Kismet in Backtrack 2, the AP shows up as a probed network, but it never shows up in the list.  The AP still broadcasts beacons which contain the ESSID and MAC, but never a channel.  The only fix is a quick power cycle.

I thought maybe it just needed a reboot, so when it starts acting up with the signal drop, I can't access the web interface anymore.  It just instantly says "done" and is a blank page, so there's no soft reset over the network, I have to physically go and pull the power and plug it back in.

This made me think of something else that I have yet to find any information on (which leads me to believe it is not true..or at least hasn't been documented yet).  Is it possible to fry the transmitter half of an AP via heavy load over a long period of time?