A few things to consider.
First, not enough evidence of copper grease in the picture. Bolts, pulley, cable ends - the whole lot should be coated in the stuff.
Same applies inside the valve, especially on the spindles.
Looks to me like your cable slack is incorrect. Removing the top cable isn't the way to check this, though.
With the ignition OFF, rotate the valve clockwise until it hits the stop. You can do this with an 8mm socket on the pulley bolt. Turn the ignition ON and the fork on the pulley should return to centre directly over the hole in the end plate.
It it's not centred, slacken both cables, re-align the fork and then set 1.5 mm slack on each cable. Pin the pulley in place when you do this.
Repeat the test above until you have the pulley returning to the correct position every time.
Should this not cure the problem, the valve spindles might be binding slightly in the bushes. This could be due to inadequate lube, slight corrosion on the spindles or possibly even the spindles being slightly out of true. The valve can bend and that is sometimes enough to affect spindle alignment. It's fixable, though.
For reference, with the pulley removed, you should be able to flip-flop the valve open/closed between thumb and forefinger with virtually zero effort. It only takes a little bit of resistance to cause the 7k fault code to trigger.
