Well, I set aside the time and dove in to replace the head seal/plug.  I used Greg's advice and printed the diagram below and taped it to a cardboard box and inserted the bolts at the proper places.  It really did make it much easier to get them back in the right places later.



The only problem came when I was finishing up and was torquing the bolts down.  The bolt shown as L25 above broke off in the head.  It appears to be recessed into the head, though I haven't yet tried removing the valve cover a second time.  I guess that now means removing the engine so I can attempt the drill/ez-out routine.  If anyone has any better ideas, I'm open to suggestions.  Otherwise, it's probably going to be a while before I ride again because I won't have the time to try this for a while.  Overall this was only one component of several making my weekend memorable in a way I wish I could easily forget.

Similar story happened to me 3 different times on 3 different Savages. All were leaking. I thought it is the plug, but came out to be the threads /twise/ and once I put a wrong bolt and I stripped the threads.
Not even once I needed to pull the engine out. First thing is to see where is the bolt brocken- how deep.
 This bolt goes thru the head and it is threaded in the cylinder. Hopefully only the bolt head broke off and You will be able to use vise-grips to pull it out. If no- You might have to pull the head off. There are a lot of posts about this situation- PROs and CONs for removing the engine to do the work. I personally don't like to do more work than the minimum , but most of the people here preffer to pull the engine out and do the work on the bench.
 If You have to drill the bolt out and mess up  the threads the best thread repair is TIME-SERT.  If You can not find anybody to do it ,better go on line and buy it from the distributor .  You need metric 6X1 kit. It is costly, but I promise You, You will never regret buying it.
 In the worst case You can do what I did with my first one- just made the hole go thru the Cylinder casting, put a longer bolt that went thru and showed out , and put a nut outside /on the bottom/. Worked 100%.
   Good luck !

Savage_Rob wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:04:


I feel your pain...really!  This one is the L60 bolt.


I was able to pick it out with a pin punch.  This is why they recommend a torque wrench on these bolts.  When I did this, I was just merrily shooting the crap while working and wasn't paying attention.  And it broke before I reached any real torque.

Oh yeah, it was a memorable moment, alright....

Savage_Rob wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:04:


Then there wasn't like a real "pop" sound when it broke?  It sort of broke easily?  Then you are probably right, and if that's the case, then there is a good chance that the bolt piece is actually loose in the threads so that you can pick it out.

Just be patient  I think that it took me an hour to get that little piece out.

That's what mine did.  You should be able to get it out without all the worry.

The first thing- lets hope You will have enough meat to grab with vise grips and unscrew it. If there is very little piece sticking, You might ask some welder to weld a piece or even a hex on top of it and unscrew it using suitable tool.
Pulling the head or the engine should me the last desperate step.

Okay, I finally got the time to take another look... and calmed down enough to do it methodically.  I hope I don't jinx anything by saying this but it appears the gods may have smiled upon me in this instance.  I have what appears to be almost 1/8 inch of bolt sticking up.  I may need to remove the carb to use vise grips but I am hopeful I won't have to drill.  I'll try to take a pic or two as I go.  Time to get back to it.

Well, unfortunately I didn't have the camera set on macro so it came out fuzzy.  I'll spare you.  However, I was able to get a hold of it with needlenose vise-grips and back it off a half turn using several very small movements.  After that, I was able to back it out by hand and I think everything went pretty well after that.  I want to let the silicone sealant cure fully before I start her up so I'm waiting until tomorrow to give it a try.