Yea your best bet is to retime, don't want to risk jumping teeth on the gears, also if your tensioner and pump do have age on it it would be a good idea to replace them to prevent futher probkems. Its not hard to do any of em while you have...

On the exhaust stroke all that momentum from the rod moving at such a high velocity has to be held by the rod bolts or the rod would push the piston into the head. At the end of the exhast stroke, TDC, the rod bolts are under tremendous tensile...