OK, I'll partially answer my own question. The problem with the stall halfway was found by looking at the system log file in var/log/system.log. There were two launch agents that weren't loading and were respawning every 10 seconds for infinity. They were both located in System/Library/LaunchAgents/ and one was called com.Apple.cvmsCompAgent_x86_64, I forgot the other, something like mdworker. I deleted these and the boot completed, but, the Setup Assistant was running asking for "Time Zone" but wouldn't respond to any input. I copied the Time Zone preferences from the old system, and also copied .applesetupdone to private/var/db. Now it booted to the login window, but stalled when the password was entered with eternal spinning. The system.log wasn't helpful for the cause of this stall, so I wiped and reinstalled a fresh system, but instead of using Migration Assistant for another 7 hours of wait, I made a new user which was perfect. I installed PikeYoseFix and rebooted, then ran Software Update and it updated to 10.10.2, and never booted successfully again. The correct boot.efi files were present, but in System/Library/CoreServices/ the PlatformSupport.plist was missing the board & model #'s, and so was the InstallableMachines.plist, so it appears that PikeYoseFix did NOT work for upgrading from 10.10.1 which was perfect, to 10.10.2. Even after I manually checked all the files I knew about, it still never booted, and I blessed the System manually also, which was shown in Startup Disk as bootable, so that didn't appear to be the issue. Now I'm going to "start over" a 3rd time.
Are you formatting the installation drive/volume when the installer starts, using disk utility? I'm no expert but it sounds like it's just overwriting itself or something.