You got that right about hoping the bleed valves don't snap off.
I'd spray them with really good penetrating oil first, a lot.
I'll tell you another trick to undo stuck or very tight things.  Tap on them
with a hammer, not too hard, but try to 'shake up' the threads.
This works amazingly well.  
I was trying to undo a tie rod end on a vanagon the other day. I had a nice
solid Stahwillie german 22 mm wrench ( a tubing but wrench too, so it was
getting 5 sides ) and a big fat ole crescent wrench on the flats of the tie
rod end. I pulled on those two wrenches as hard as I could, several times,
and the nut just would not budge. 
  I help a sledge hammer head under the nut, and whacked it quite hard on
the upper side of the nut ( like on opposite sides of the hex ) , like 10
whacks, and it unscrewed just fine after that. Amazing affect.  I always
whack on CV joint screws before trying to undo them. 
 Bleed valves are delicate almost, so be very careful. 
 I hope it goes well at that pipe/hose junction by the upper a-arm.  Even
all clean and nice I don't think they're that fun to deal with. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
robert feller
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 7:44 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: lost brake line...

This is great. I went from a "oh s%*t" situation to shouldn't be hard to do
myself come Wednesday! lots of oil, a little heat, new brake fluid and pray
everything comes apart and bleeder values don't snap!

I'm sure this rust is s sign of many ugly variables to come...

On Dec 24, 2007 10:33 PM, Karl Mullendore <groups@westyventures.com> wrote:

> Bending the line by hand will be fine, just don't try any tight bends.
>
> robert feller wrote:
>
> > So tell me about brake lines.All the same different diameters? Easily
> > mailable it seems from you comments. Any special little bender tools to
> get
> > the turns "just right"?
>

--
Shawn Feller
Ohio
www.carboncow.com