...or at least thats what it sounds like. Possible bad chain tensioner?

I had the same problem. I ordered the new timing chain tensioner from courtesy nissan parts. Make sure you get the gasket as well. The procedure is on SE-R.net. It was easy, and the majority of the cricket sound vanished. It is still present, only when I am at idle. The problem is that you and I have some high mileage cars. Eventually our timing chain needs to be replaced along with the rest of the engine. All in all it was worth it.

Thanks for the reply. My car has 159k miles on it, but I changed the engine out a year and a half ago. If its true what they say about the JDM engines coming with only 30k miles on them, This one should have about 60k on it now...but its anyone's guess.

hey, just wanting to know how much is the tensioner and gasket? I have 118,000 on my 91 and it sounds noisy on startup. It kinda scares me to beat it hard. So I'm going to replace it.

Another thing to check is if your have put an intake on. I took the short legnth of hose off of the breather filter and put the small filter on the box and had a "cricket" noise as well. I put the hose back on an made a little adapter so I could put the little filter on the end of that and the sound went away.:D

that cricket sound is coming from the pair valves on the classic, this happens only on idle and can be heard when you have any hi-flow intake

Tevs

Hey "sunny" would you elaborate on this? If your talking about that box on the "front" of the engine near the fan, I took mine off. I hooked a hose going from the block to the valve cover "T". I figured this would be alright. It's just suppose to relieve pressure in the bottom end, right?

on the 91-93 classics, its the assembly in front, close to the fans. my understanding is that this part of the emissions equipment (pair valves) is to add additional air into the exhaust stream to help aid in breakdown of pullutants in the catalytic converter or to help aid in catalytic light-off. the EGR and EGR-bpt are connected to these as well.

anyone, correct me if i am wrong. that's what my monkey brain understands :D

tevs