Fluorescent tubes, ballasts

Hi all, I'm planning on a small project using fluorescent tubes and I need some information on them.

The plan is to fit some 11W fluorescent tubes (rings rather) onto a car, a car has 12V DC available as a power source.

Seeing that the tubes need a ballast to be run from 12V DC, the cheapest alternative was a camp/cabin light box that is a 11W fluorescent light enclosed in a small casing with a cigerette plug for getting power.

My plan is to rip out the ballast from these camp/cabin lights box, and refit them onto the fluorescent rings. The problem arises because there are 4 pins on the rings arranged in a square pattern, I don't know how to reconnect these to the ballast.

Therefore I'm starting a thread here hoping that the wise CPFers can give me a few pointers.

Thanks!

-YC

The circular tubes are just long tubes bent into a circle.
The long tubes also have 4 pins, 2 on ech end.
You can find which pins are pairs by measuring the resistance between. The pairs should have a low resistance between them (heater resistance), the opposite end pairs should have no continuity between them.

Things to check here:

Is the ballast matched to the rating of the Circline tubes that you're going to be using?

Do the tubes require preheating of the electrodes and does the ballast provide this?

Heck...check Don Klipstein's site for more details...this is one guy who really knows flourescents inside and out...and pretty much any light source for that matter.

http://misty.com/people/don/index.html

Ah yes... Don Klipstein's site, I should have known. That site has been around for ages!

Rating is the same for the tubes and ballast I'll be using, but preheating of the electrodes I have no idea how I can find out.

-YC

In the standard old FL fixture, the FL bulb has 4 pins, 2 pins on each end for heaters, when the voltage across the tube thru the heaters is above 90v the small Neon bulb in the starter puts current thru the heaters until the arc thru the tube is started, and then the neon bulb turns off

A CCFL (Cold Cathode FL) tube has 2 pins and simply runs on a higher voltage using a convertor circuit

Its interesting to note, that long FL tubes will NOT start without metal behind them, a friend of mine built a light table and just used the tubes, ballast and starter - it would not start, but when we put a small strip of "burglar alarm foil" on the back of the tubes, it worked great