Yep phunkdoktaspok is dead right mate!
I had the exact same trouble a few months ago... went out bought a second hand tach' for the ute...
When you look at the back of it you'll see like a little white plastic sleeve that the wire does a 'loop' through so there should be two bare ends to this....
Now one end goes to your negative on the coil... the other end goes to your neg on the dizzy..
To test which ends go to which without doin a permanent connection... What i did and it worked was...
Unplug the wire running to the tag on the outside of the diz' then strip and wrap one of the ends around this 'tag' and place the dizzy wire back on. Then put the other wire (the other end of the wire to the negative of the coil...
This should DEFINATELY work like this... that other wire that's floating around by itself won't do much... i guess it's like an isolating earth or something...
Anyways give the dat a rev...
If no response don't swap the position of the wires around but instead... note how the loop is formed on the actual tach' and do the reverse loop of it... and try again...
(u should c what i mean when you examine the back of the tach')
Yeh i guess the idea is to create a 'loop' and that's what's happening... tach----coil-----dizy---tach...
Well i'm sure someone will have some more tech' explantion of it...as this is a bit crude but it worked for me....
You might want to crimp the wire into the dizzy wire and do the coil wire properly once satisified...etc..
Good luck!
Cheers