Well, thanks for the replies.
As for clipping the arms and then removing the cables, I did that last time, ( about 2 months ago) when I installed a new vavle. Last week I noticed that I could not shut off the heat and saw that the arms of the new valve were broken, one was missing completely. I picked up another valve from the junkyard, and clipped the wires to remove that one from the donor vehicle. Now I have to carefully remove those wire ends from the arms w/o damage so I can install the cables from the dash control.
I just love it when the FSM says simply "remove".
Any more advice would be appreciated; is there a tool for this, or a secret, or just persistance?