So I had a broken timing belt on my 2009 Hyundai Accent and found some minor valve bending. I decided to pull the head and install new valves as well as HLAs since it had been ticking for years. New valves lapped and head reassembled.
There are two issues at this point. The first is that turning cams is quite difficult after torquing the cam caps. The head is on my bench and I'm turning it with a breaker bar on the socket. Torque is set to 10.1 foot pounds on caps. Second issue is that the valves don't close all the way. I've tried fully draining the HLAs to loosen lash but that didn't do much.
Any thoughts?

 

Right now you feel the head is in good shape. But it would be a good idea to have the head checked for a possible warped problem .

 

Did you use assembly lube when putting it back together?

 

something sounds very wrong, I would bring the head to a professional with the cams installed, and have them check it out, Maybe the wrong lifters? Could the cam bearings have been mixed up? maybe backwards? Are all the valves new?, did you measure them compared to the old good valves? Depending on how deep the seats were cut, there may not be enough clearance between the cam and lifter, It is a can of worms, as we can't look, measure, feel what you are seeing.... Also we don't know your skill level from a name on a screen.

 

Skill level: Reckless Amateur

So I looked over it again tonight and saw that although the keepers have a firm grip on the valve stems, the keeper ridges are at the top of the stem and not in the stem groove. I'm finding it a bit tricky but have started to reset the keepers further down so they are locked in the stem grooves. I will update when done which probably won't be till Monday. In messing with the cam caps I've stripped threads in one so a helicoil kit is on order.
This is a second car so I'm just treating this project as a hobby to see if I can fix it relatively cheaply.
Thank you for the responses and I will update so that maybe other reckless amateurs can learn from my mistakes.

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Just to add a bit of information; after lapping the valves and before installing the cams I did a leak test and all 16 valves held fine.

 

Senior member will need to approve my first reply appearantly.
I used mobile one on the first assembly but will use grease on next try.

 

Yeah, I would listen to s-petersen. It could be something else.

 

So the quick version of the missing reply is about the valve spring keepers not actually locked in the valve stem grooves. Will update.

 

Update
First, thank you, s-peterson, for the insight and in response to my skill level I'd have to say I'm a reckless amateur.
Now what I did wrong will probably sound foolish to many of you. I am posting this on hopes to guide other amateurs through my mistakes.
The valve spring keepers were not properly locked into the valve stem grooves.
I will post pictures of my mistakes that show what I thought was locked and what locked actually looks like.
My initial problems of cam binding and valve seating are now solved. I did however strip the threads on two of the cam caps. I will have helicoils to install on Monday but things are looking good at this point.

This shows two that I thought were locked correctly and one ready for the spring to be compressed.

These three are properly locked down with the keeper ridge set in the valve stem groove.