Yesterday I was using my tractor, with forks, to unload a truck. When I tried to go into reverse it just wouldn't go without a lot of effort pulling back on the shift lever. When I got back up to my shop I got under the tractor to see if the shift linkage was somehow damaged. What I found was that a wrench had fallen down and had been wedged in and was keeping the tractor from going into reverse. I started thinking about this thread and it least on a sync shifter I could come up with a simple locking mechanism that would lock the tractor in a gear, or out of gear, effectively disabling the tractor from moving. I remembered an old Volkswagen I used to have that had a little key lock on the shifter that did pretty much the same thing. Hummmm.
It seems like the best way to stop joy riders and some serious theifs would be to disable the transmission. There's a saftey interlock that stops you from starting the tractor while it's in gear so that would prevent the joy rider from taking it. I can also shift the range lever into neutral and lock it so if someone hotwired the tractor it still wouldn't be driveable.
I'm not familiar with the hydro trans but I would think the same sort of things could be done to prevent theft.
There have been a lot of threads on this site about people having problems with interlocks and pedal linkage that if you put your mind to it you could use this to your advantage to keep someone else from being able to move the tractor without a crane.
Branch