Pulled the heads and had to replace 4 bent valves and all valve guides.
When rebuilding the top half upper manifold wasn't seating properly due to moment applied by EGR pipe. Hand threaded most of the bolts and the manifold seated. Two of the bold did not want to turn freely, but by this time, I had about half of the bolts snug, but not torqued... (done by hand with a socket extension and the hex drive, no wrench) The rearward bolts were still hesitant, so I removed all of the bolts disconnected the evil EGR pipe from the EGR valve and reseated the manifold. For good measure I went to the second set of intake gaskets I had (included with head gasket kits). Manifold seated much better this time and all bolts went though just fine with no hesitation. Reconnected evil EGR pipe to EGR valve after manifold was torqued down. Finished rebuild. Car runs rough and sputters out at idle. Now there is apparantly a leak in the intake manifold somewhere which is affecting the vacuum since the car will not hold an idle or blow proper emmissions. The cause is now being troubleshot by a mechanic here in Denver. Car was taken to mechanic for final vacuum checkout since I lost my pictures from disassembly and could not find helpful schematics on my 126 CD. After straightening out my vacuum-line-spagetti, the mechanic told me there appears to be a leak on the rear of my intake manifold, probably a sealing issue, as determined by spraying ether (or other flamible arisol) and noting rev changes. Mechanic gave me worse-case senerio of what he thought it might be. I can't imagine that I damaged the manifold during the first attempt at attaching it, however I'm not dismissing the possibility that it was damaged in another way while it was off the car for 3 months (was only able to work on it for about 1 day each weekend). My guess is that probably either those doughnut gaskets between the upper and lower manifolds didn't seal peoperly or that the moment applied by the EGR pipe is causing an issue with the manifold/head interface(s). I doubt the problem is a bad manifold, but I can't rule it out thus I'm planning for the worse and should probably know more by tuesday. I hated having to take the car to a mechanic, but at least I was able to drive the car to the shop!

Thats the manifold story in a nutshell