They’re made by a Dutch firm and are strong enough to lift scooters, mopeds, loaded bakfietsen etc. We have four of them and have never had a problem. It’s really the only way to work with heavy bikes.

Its called: Fietstakel VEH-150
They’re made by De Vries. Their site is (entirely in Dutch):
http://www.fietstakels.nl/index2.html

So here’s the easy workaround I found:

1. Let it thaw.

2. Remove the cables with their casings from the brake handles and/or from your shifters. You’ll end up with casings that still have cables in them, so you can’t spray oil in them. Now what?

3. Get a balloon and slip it over the cable housing. Wind a metal wire around it to seal it.

4. Now cut off the top of the balloon. Insert the straw of a spray can with lubricant. Seal this side too – I did this with my hands, but that’s not very convenient as you need to hold the can as well as seal the straw.

5. Skip 5 and 6.

7. Spray the oil into the housing until it begins coming out the other end. Please be very careful: not only will the oil come out the rear end, if you spray too hard, you’ll also risk the balloon popping.

7.5 Oops. Put a rag at the brake end of the housing to catch the oil coming out at great velocity.

8. Remove balloon, reattach cable to handles. No need to readjust!

I took me many seconds to trace the source of the wheel blocking while traffic was jamming up around us. Eventually we gave up, I continued with my colleagues who were waiting for me and she dragged the whole Bakfiets to the side of the road I assume. One unhappy customer! I assume she was on her way to pick up her kids, considering the contents of the box under the sail that fell open.

Perhaps you should send out a mailing to all your customers about this? And there should be a fix for models in the future. Or a maintenance reminder when you sell it. For now a broadcast on the local television channel perhaps? Just send a press release to AT5 and Parool and see what happens.

What’s the answer about disc brakes then?