Those things are SWEET! I ordered a pair of 6" and a pair of the 12" white ones. Put the 12" inch ones in for my floorboard illumination just like you did, and it looks really cool. Gives that 'crisp' look a lot light gas discharge lighting illuminates. I noticed they are slightly dim when you first fire them up, then after a few seconds on up to a minute, they get very very bright.

I still haven't put the 6" ones to use yet. I'm still trying to think of a good little place for them. I might build some little white painted long skinny reflectors to attach to them, to point the light all one way (kinda like household florescent lights) and I might try mounting them in front of my visors to use as map lights (since my real maplights have red bulbs in them). Ahh, the things I could think of to use these for.
Anyways, thanks a lot for posting about your experiences with them.

ya, they're neat little suckers arn't they.... you should try putting a 12 inch tube in your trunk, to replace the incandescent bulb there... while you're at it.. why not 2 12inch ones... the dual bulbs that work off the one ballast is only a couple bucks more. you actually can see what you're doing when you do that... so much more light light the old bulb.

ya, i've noticed that too about them. when they turn on, you get a good amount of usable light. then after about 10 seconds on mine, they reach their full brightness. newer tubes takes longer to reach full brightness, the ones i have in my trunk takes about 25-30 seconds verses the ones under the dash which can take only 10.

CCFL tubes are suppose to last about 20,000 hrs, i'm guess by using them as on/off entry lights, and they're used i should get about 5,000 hrs of use before they crap out. which i'm not too worried about since they're real cheap to replace when and if they die. the trunk ones should pretty much last me the life of the car since it's new and only gets used on occasion.

what colors did you get Josch?

how bright are the 6" ones?

I'm interested in trying these out for my trunk. Where did you guys get them? How big is the inverter/transformer? Thanks.

the inverter/transformer is actually quite small....

1 inch x .75 inch x 2.5 inch

there are also tabs on the bottom to make mounting easier.

Josch : i don't know how much power they draw... i would imagine that they wouldn't draw much, definitely less then their incandescent counterpart as they are more efficient at converting energy to light.

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/thread?forumid=216460&messageid=1064551880&lp=1064708060

for about $12... i'm really tempted to use them for my trunk. but i have a sub in there.. and rattles already startin to annoy me

I bought this brand: http://store.yahoo.com/glowingstuff/du12winco.html
which were nice because they sell the whole kit, and it comes with 1 inverter (like the ballast/power supply) and it had 2 cathode tubes that run off the one power supply. Since I was in it for the max light output and usability, I got the WHITE ones. I mounted the power supply in the center console and ran each cathode off to it's respective side. And they have nice connectors on them so everything plugs all in all nice. The company makes UV ones, blue ones, green ones and I can't remember the rest of the colors (if any) that they offered. I only cared about the white ones since I use light to see with. I just bought the pair of 6"ers and the pair of 12"ers to test out, but they passed the test so I will get another few to put in my S-15 truck.

Hey Pliepl, do you know how much power they draw? I suppose I could check it with my meters and stuff, but I was just curious if you knew by chance.