MG Car Repair: MG Midget 1966, vacuum gauge, manifold vacuum

Question
The problem the car is having is that when i start it, it will run really roughly and then just stall after about 10seconds. When I push the accelerator it does nothing, even when pushed to the floor. When the car is put into gear it won't drive it will just stall. This problem was not very bad and then got gradually worse so it won't even idle now. A few days ago it would drive and idle but would only drive very slowly even with the accelerator to the floor (about 15mph).

If you could give me any ideas on what this problem could be that would be great.

Answer
Hi Pete,
Your symptoms narrow the problem down to only a thousand things so you need to do some testing to narrow it further.

First, is there any black smoke out the tail pipe?

Second you need to get a vacuum gauge and put it on a straight manifold vacuum port and start the engine and very slowly raise the RPM and watch the gauge and tell me what happens.
(vacuum gauges are not expensive it you don't have one)

Let me know and I will run you through the next step.
Howard