Well I finally got time to mess with this and I must say, its not as bad as I thought it could be. Turns out the key to the whole procedure is to lower the motor on the pass. side by pulling the two motor mount bolts out of the top of the motor. The chain did have some slack in it, but the tensioner looks fine and had plenty of nylon still on it, but got replaced anyway. Turns out the noise coming from that assembly is actually the tensioner vibrating against the crank main cap at the tensioner's pivot point. I guess if the chain gets enough slack the cheap sheet metal tensioner vibrates against the cap causing that annoying chattering at idle. Took me 5hrs with a 30min break and standard hand tools, no air, if I did it again maybe 3.5hr.
Doug