Well, the whole story on the Svea 123 stove that I owned..it was the older style that you had to constantly remove the brass valve and poke a special needle through it to clean the carbon out. During that process at some point the valve was overtightened and it had a hairline crack in it. Every time you tried to get the stove going it would fizzle out. I nearly threw it off a cliff but did not want to litter. I found out later that the cause of the problems was the cracked valve and replaced it and also added the little pump and cap to provide pressure for startup.

I think my real issue with it was the height and pot stability. I was also doing a lot of winter mountain hiking on snowshoes and Nordic skis and it just wasn't all that happy in the cold.