[Yikes]

Hey guys, I'm at my ends meet with this thing. My 180sx has both an idling and starting problem. When cold, the engine at times would just keep on cranking, when it cranks it idles like trash. However, when warmed up it goes alright and drives okay. The idle also drops insanely fast and almost stalls the engine when it gets revved, oh and there's like a metal ticking noise in the exhaust as well but I'm not sure if that's an exhaust leak or something greater (but good compression reflect a somewhat healthy engine doesn't it?).

So far I've checked my coils, my compression is good and even across all cylinders. It's getting fuel into it, I've gapped and changed sparkplugs twice now (first went with BKR6E then BKR7E). I've searched in almost all Sr20det related forums and surely I've found similar problems but never the exact (most have it when it's hot, or when they clutch in, or the car will stall when coming to a stop which doesn't reflect my issue) and most of them never really have a follow-up fix to their issue. Oh I've also already cleaned out my IACV, I tried to do the MAF (Z32 MAF) test but my engine cuts off immediately when I pull the plug so I'm not sure if that's damaged either or how else to test it (I also don't really want to spend 200+ dollars buying one just to test it).

I suspect it's either an o2 sensor, TPS sensor or crankshaft position sensor but I'm not even sure if I'm on the right track with that, so any pointers would be much appreciated.

I'm not super techy with engines and what not since I've only had the car for a few months and I'm learning on the go, so I'd like to apologise for the seeminly dumb and long post.

*Edit, new information*