Mark, how does the challenger work with those loopy bonnet type pads? They are quite thick and absorbent and are a favorite among franchise types. They work great with a rotary machine. But how well do the work with the challenger?

I know the ones you mean, but I've never used them.
But whatever you can do with a rotaty (the franchise-types you referred to) you can do all the better with an orbital. What are they made of? If they are all or mostly cotton, I imagine you could remove a lot of soil with them. If not, maybe not. The Challenger is designed to run most smoothly with the relatively thin cotton or blended pads. I do some work with the double pads made by Argo & Co (http://www.argoco.com)
but the Challenger runs a little rougher with these,
as it does when using one of those thick, synthetic, green-striped scrubber pads that I include in my Package for pre-scrubbing heavily soiled areas.