This problem started as what seemed to be a charging problem and had me thinking about the stator. One night while driving i noticed the neutral light and speedometer light would only come on with higher rpms. The automotive experience i have led me to think, alternator (or stator/generator) is the source of the problem. Whenever i'd be puttering around or idleing a lot the bike would die w/ no power at worst, or needed to be charged to start again, at best. However, one day i noticed that the speedo light & neutral light quit working completely..... now, no charging problem! bike started fine for a while and i didn't have to charge it until the neg. battery cable came loose and drained the battery. This is where i'm at right now, as the gas tank leaked, so i'm getting a new one and decided it's time to run this problem down. I don't have a shop manual, so i started drawing my own wiring diagram to trace this problem to it's source. Here's how it goes:

The positive from the speedo light and neutral light merge as an orange wire then lead to the right handlebar controls. So i took them apart. The orange wire is soldered onto a little part with a red wire running back to the main loom (more on the red wire in a moment). Time for pictures:



^^^This shows the orange wire from the speedo & neutral lights going in and the red wire going out to the main loom, circled in yellow. The green circle is a nipple like button that seems to be pressed with the handle bar controls are fully assembled. Here is another picture to relate you to the positions of the wires and button (green circle is button, yellow arrow points to wires)



Now for the red wire. It runs all the way to the tail light, which was confirmed with a continuity test. Could a bad tail light cause the neutral and speedo lights to go out? and what is the part that the red and orange wire are soldered to? and are the speedo & neutral lights noramally tied together or is this some sort of redone wiring?

please help