Yup, the choke is exzactly what I meant to say. Thanks for the tip
The bike is from Pasedena California. I have traced wire till I am blue in the face but I haven't found anything. Even took the generator apart and looked at the stator, (inconclusive, the right ohms anyway) The dilectric grease is a good idea, tried to get some of that awhile back but the parts guy didn't know what I was talking about and I didn't know the right word.
Bought a new battery when all this started, battery does not run down on its own. Holds a charge just fine. I have a good trickle charger and I have noticed nothing unusual with the battery. When the bike used to die it sounded like it was "choking out" (yes that's my phrase) I would say it sounded like it was running too rich. The choke had frozen in place within the sleeve and so I had to tune the carb to run right when the bike was warmed up and just keep trying to start it till it warmed up. I have no way of knowing if the new choke cable fixed the problem because when I got it hooked up the spark had stopped working.
I spent a lot of fruitless hours trying to see how the choke problem/dying could be connected to the spark but I finally concluded that they were two seperate problems. I have had that happen before, some of the problems above are one right after the other.