[WillyZ83]

Mishimoto sells an oil cooler kit to keep the oil temps lower for the lt1. Anyone have experience with them? Always looking at ways to help the engine run better / cooler.

https://www.mishimoto.com/2016-chevr...ooler-kit.html

[LT1ornothing]

I don't run one, but I doubt you would see significant oil temperature decreases with it alone. It may work well with a properly mounted auxiliary fan dedicated to the cooler. An alternative to lower oil temperature would be a lower temperature thermostat and reprogramming the fans to come on sooner in accordance with the thermostat. Make sure you choose a quality thermostat if you decide to go this route, there are some really crappy T-stats out there.

[FrostZ]

I don't have personal experience with Mishimoto's actual oil cooler but I do have their sandwich plate with the integrated thermostat connected to a C&R Racing oil cooler. It mounts into the driver side AUX radiator location on cars equipped with them. When driving it on track I saw well over a 50F drop in oil temps equalizing just over 230F. Before it could easy pass 270 on any given track day. An added benefit is it lowers engine coolant temps since the stock "oil cooler" uses coolant to attempt to control oil temps. In all reality it heats up the oil during the first few minutes of the engine running as coolant temps increase far more rapidly than oil. When on track however the oil is much hotter than the coolant, unfortunately this drags coolant temps up as they are tied together.

TLDR for a street driven car that doesn't see track use an oil cooler won't do much if anything, temps are well controlled in almost all street driving no matter how spirited. So unless you plan to track the car it wouldn't be required by any means. It obviously can't hurt regardless if done properly. You can over cool the oil without having a thermostat installed into the system allowing for the oil to circulate even at engine startup which would delay the oil coming to operating temp which is never ideal.