Hi Roger, and sorry to hear of your disaster!
Blue smoke is a sure sign of oil getting into the combustion chamber.
My gut instinct on this one is a valve or valve spring failure. But a piston
is also a good possibility. It should be easy enough to check if it is the
valve - remove the valve cover, inspect carefully, if all the valves and
springs look the same then you probably haven't got the sort of problem that
would cause your engine to die in the way you describe.
If it is a valve problem, it may be fixable without TOO much trouble, although
the head may have to come off, but at least you can leave most of the engine in
the car. If all the valves look good, I suspect the whole engine will have to
come out, the problem will be in the piston, or possibly the conrod.
You'll need an engine hoist of some sort, but there still shouldn't be anything
there you can't do if you are prepared to have a go. You'll need time, a
garage, a sense of adventure, a Haynes manual, and our advice, but it's all
do-able. I kick myself now for some of the things that I paid garages to do in
my first days of MG ownership, that I'm sure now I could have done if I'd had a
go (clutch replacement). Although, with my MG as my only source of daily
transport in those days, time was never in great supply...
If it turns out your engine is toast (hope not), rebuilt replacements are
available for #875, but let's hope you don't have to go down that route...
Richard & Sammy ('73 Black Tulip BGT)
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