Just had to report:

Been soaking a stuck head bolt on and off waiting for a valve press to be
delivered.  Got that press today, (man, does that make it easy!) got all the
valves and keepers out and the stuck bolt came out with vice grips!  Big
sigh of relief.  Couple of the valves were banged up, but have new ones on
the way.  Oddly enough, the end of the stuck bolt (inside the block) had
been ground down.  The heads were rebuilt about 55K ago by a VW dealership.
Why would that be ground down on 4 sides?

Anyway, looks like Joesvan will be tooling the down the road to Buses by the
Beach if everything else goes back together well!

Check out pics here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pnoceanwesty/JoesVanHeadWork42309?authkey=Gv1sRgCN6E5JDItYGEQA
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Pete
'79 Westy "Aardvark"
'87 Westy "Joe's Van"
WWW.Busesbythebeach.com