Hi Baz,
The LSx engines do seem to run quite warm. A lower temp thermostat was a popular mod.
Your engine is also a new crate motor and as such will have tight clearances inside. Tighter clearances mean more heat from friction. The rings will probably not be fully seated yet and there will be a bit of combustion pressure and heat leaking past the rings and generating more heat in your motor rather than going out the exhaust.
Once it's well run in the
oil temps should improve but I think an
oil cooler is a must for any LSX that sees track time. A few spirited runs away from the traffic lights or a blast up the freeway on ramp will not add a lot of extra heat to the
oil. However sustained high speed laps on a track will see a bit more heat soak into the oil. This has been found by a few who have run these motors on the track.
The only way the oil has of cooling down in your motor is running across the inside surfaces of the block and that heat in turn being taken away by the engine cooling system. The cooling system really only takes care of the heat in the cylinder heads and the upper cylinder walls.
The solution is to pump the oil out of the block and through it's own cooling system. Done properly it needs to have it's own thermostat too since the oil needs to get to operating temp as quickly as possible to do it's job.
Phil Neall has done a terrific job of plumbing an oil cooler into his CR. He can probably give you all the details on it if you PM him. I made a super low profile oil filter adapter for him that keeps the large #10 lines and fitting up out of the way. I plan to duplicate his setup on mine and have sourced most of the parts already.
Cheers