VW LT Cambelt Failure Help Needed

[Alistair E]

Just before Christmas a small piece of the tensioner on my 40k miles VW LT decided to break off and shred the belt. It's a 2.5 diesel. This caused a not insignificant amount of damage which I'm now trying to sort. I was told that the normal outcome is to snap the cam in about 3 places so when I removed the rocker cover and found the cam intact I thought that was lucky. Unfortunately the results don't seem to be a great deal better with I think 7 bent valves. I took the head to a recommended local garage but he's told me he's having trouble removing the valves as the bends appear to be on the spring side. This means that the discs on the springs won't push down the valve to allow the collets to be removed.

My main question is, can the valve stems be drilled out? I don't mean the whole stem. Just enough to clear the collets. I'm not sure what material is used for the stems and if the exhaust and inlet are different materials. The valves are all close to being closed so not much room to work with there. The other option would be to remove the heads but that may be problematic if they're sodium filled.

Any suggestions or help gratefully received.

Thanks

Alistair

[piotr]

Have you got photo of the head ?could you not cut the valves between spring coils as they going to the bin anyway .

[Alistair E]

I haven't got the head to look at as it's still with the garage but I don't think there's access to the sides of the springs. I still need to know what to use to cut or drill the stems as I don't know what material or if they are hardened.