I have two boxes that were given to me. The hdd crapped out on both, I think the heads crashed, they do the click of death. Can I do anything with them besides part them out?
Any ideas or a pointer to a tut I may have missed would be greatly appreciated.

Put a modchip in both and put a new HDD in

I have a modded box that works fine. Would it be possible to mod the two junkers with a solderless chip to change the hddkey/eeprom and rereturn themt o stock(with new drives of course) or would I still need the original hddkey/eeprom?

Yes.

Buy a solderless adapter for ur modchip. Put the modchip in, then the new hard drive...using the modchip to set it up and lock it. Then take the modchip out, and do the same in the 2nd xbox. Then put the modchip back in your modded xbox and viola, you've fixed both xboxes for a few bucks.