VF500, instrument panel, rear tail light not working. I'll explain more.

So my buddy bought a 86 vf500 FF. Something to ride around on, get used to riding. Anyways, The rear "day time" running light isn't working, neither is the instrument panel lights. He checks the obvious things, bulbs fuses, wires etc. The then checks the ignition and finds that it's broken, takes it apart to find it all worn down and what not. So he decides to test to see if it's a wire or something else. Plugged in just the harness with the contact points for the ignition, then took a piece of wire and went from the positive to the rear running lights and instrument panel every thing worked. He bought a new ignition for his bike *correct part double checked* installed it and same problem. So if he takes the old ignition just the harness and contact points and does the same thing everything worked. So after taking back the part asking the tech working there about his problem and tell about his testing method they where at a loss also. I did a search on booth google and this forum and have not found any sort of solution. As far as we know everything works, by testing it using the old broken ignition harness. The new ignition doesn't even solve the problem, and that is the only problem that we can find.