BSA B44 Shooting Star

The BSA B44 Shooting Star was a motorcycle made by BSA at their factory in Small Heath, Birmingham. Similar to the BSA C15 and sharing many of the same parts, the B44 had an uprated chassis. A weak point of the BSA 250 and most 350 unit singles were the big end bearing and timing side crank bush. The B44 had a double roller big end and a single lipped roller bearing supporting the drive side of the crank, with a ball bearing on the timing side. The timing side ball bearing was prone to failure, so one popular update was to replace it with an NUP305 removable flange roller bearing, thus strengthening the timing side and controlling the crankshaft end float. On the B50 single lip roller bearings were fitted on both sides of the crankshaft, with an outrigger ball bearing on the drive side to provide increased rigidity and end float control.