With no resistor, you may simply be wearing outt eh points faster than normal. All that means is you should own a dwell meter, and spend some quality time under the hood more often. Hard starting is a possible sign of worn points, and setting point gap is not really very accurate. I'd simply use the right procedure and set the dwell on each set of points, possibly file or replace them, and see what it does. Or, you can upgrade to any electronic.