Cyberroc said:
Ignition with an under the hood shut off along with a driver activated switch, such as having to activate a turn signal or other button along with the ignition. So basically a 3 stage ignition, this should keep the less than professional away and you should also take your battery.
new batt, jumper power to the fuel solenoid on the injection pump (assuming a diesel), screwdriver or a short jumper wire to the starter, tractor runs (not important with a rolloff truck or a tilt bed trailer and a winch.
The second part will take pouring a heavy concrete axel locks. These are connected to steel arms that can be lifted over the axel using your tractors FEL or BH, thus requiring a running tractor to remove.
not quite visualizing these, what shape are they and how do they hold the axel still (are they C shaped and go over the axle?, how do they work?) if they are big enough that a 4.5" cutoff saw with an abrasive blade cant cut them and dont allow the tractor to be dragged they might help.
Last, reworked hydro lines with removable sections that have the same ends. For example if the removable sections have both ends that are male, even if the sections of hose that are left on the tractor happen to be long enough to reach, it will have the same end as the receiver and therefore cannot be plugged in.
on what? the FEL? the BH (if so equipped)
if it is on the FEL you would just remove the hose ends and the bucket will float, attatch a winch to it or under it and off you go. if it is on a BH, it might slow someone down, but if they have a comealong they can probably remove the hose end and pull the stabilizers up, having the boom out and dug in would make it harder, but we are getting to the edge of the "inconvient to use" stage.
the same thing could be done with a pair of female QD's one w/male threads and one w/female threads, however it would impede the flow of hyd fluid during normal operation.
these three together would probbaly stop most thieves, as it would make it inconvient to load the tractor however if they have a tilt bed hauler w/a winch, hotwiring skills, a few basic tools (2 10-12" adjustable wrenches and/or some big visegrips) and a comealong or two, they could likely load up in under 45 mins.
the trick would be to make it look like the tractor is either bad (major broken, in which case they might take it to part it out) or hard to get to (hard to do).
Aaron Z