By having the weight of your machine - Challenger or whatever - bearing down on an area smaller than your pad driver, you increase the machine's scrubbing & soil-loosening capability. I first tried this with one of the 10" Fiber-Plus and Fiber-Max pads that I use with my 24" Cimex. But since these pads are so porous, they pretty quickly flatten down to pancake thin-ness.
So next I tried doing the same thing with the 11" pads made for the little Oreck Orbiter. Oreck markets these as terrycloth, but they seem more like some kind of synthetic material to me. Since they cover only about 60% of my Challenger's pad driver area, they give me increased scrubbing power. There are some softer or more sensitive carpet fibers on which I wouldn't attempt this method, but where I have tried it, I've been getting good results.
Hi Grant
So far that hasn't happened. What I scrupulously avoid doing is "heeling" the outer edge of the pad driver the way you might occasionally do when working with a full-size pad. I've also been thinking of trying the same concept using 3 or 4 of those upholstery-mit-sized green striped pads; placing three out around the perimeter of the pad driver, and maybe one in the middle - or not. I used to have one of these mits, but lost it, and I don't know who carries them.
