well its storming here in lower alabama so i pulled it in the shop and sure enough the regulator had melted around the lower yellow wire, removed them and its reading .5ohm, thats a little higher than what you said it should be running but i dont think it will effect much. or am i wrong? im going to replace the regulator real quick and see what happens, also i have heard there are high and low rmp stators, if this is a low rpm stator and i turned it at a high rpm would that cause this regulator to be melted? or does this just happen over time?
thanks for you help chet, you made this a lot easier on me

I can't think of what box is on the airbox but if you tell me what color the wires are I can tell you what it is.

Your regulator has three studs on top with 2 yellow and a red wire. You can test the stator without taking it off. Remove the two yellows off the regulator and test for ohms of resistance on the two yellows. They should be .25-.45 ohms and not have any continuity to ground.

I recently got an 83 2.4 200 powerhead and swapped it out on my rig. Everything seemed fine until i take it out for a shakedown run and it wasn't charging. There was a small black box (maybe 3 1/2" wide, 1 1/2" tall, 2" deep) that was mounted on top of the carb cover that didn't get put on when we swapped the carb cover, it has 4 wires coming out of it, one a ground, one went to the stator, one was just cut with a connector on the end and i honestly cant remember where the other went. Is this some kind of voltage regulator or something like that? Id hate to swap out the stator if this little box being unhooked is the only problem.

any help is much appreciated, thanks in advance guys,
Hunter