Do I need an oil cooler?
 

With track season coming up in ~2 months, I was wondering if anyone has any input if we will need an oil cooler for track days.

Usually sessions are 12 minutes long. Summer temps can get up to 90 degrees.

Any thoughts?

For track use, yes.

For street, I have an HKS SC without an oil cooler with no issues.

You want to keep the oil below 125C on the track if possible. Without the oil cooler I could do 4 or 5 minutes duration time attack then cool down before another run. With the oil cooler, the temp was stable at a lower than max temp provided the vehicle was moving.

Same climate as you.

FWIW, the 2022 come with an OEM oil cooler (which also warms in the winter) that's connected to the engine coolant.

I never ran a cooler on my 2013 at the track so it remains to be seen what the 2022 oil temps will look like on the track with the extra displacement.

Ima say, probably not. Last-gen didn't need them either IMO. At the very least run an event and see what the oil temps first. Personally, for my track usage (~4x 15-minute sessions per track day), at 272F, I'm fine running 5w30 oil with 3.5+ HTHS.

Wait what???? It comes with an oil cooler?!

Yes. It has a oil/water heat exchanger that the oil filter sits on top of.

Okay, you’re right, I looked into it. So the coolant warms/cools the oil. Which means keeping water temps down just got more important.

I think I may do a new thicker radiator with some Spal fans

Stock is probably gonna be fine for coolant temps. Is for 1st gen anyway.

Again, I'd track it before assuming you need to upgrade.

I was going to say what @ZDan said.

I'd check out @CSG Mike 's build thread since he's been tracking it from pretty much day 1.

There aren't many data came out this far but some GR86 folks are seeing 250F oil temperature after just a few laps on the track, which is around the edge of the not optimal temperature. We have yet to see any data on a summer day. So I would say if you would like to drive the car to it's full capacity for more than 20mins sessions, you are likely to need a better oil cooler in the future. If you willing to do some cool down laps in the middle of the season, factory oil cooler might just work out. Just my 2 cents.

Gen1 factory race cars use heavy weight oil and oil cooler. The FA20 is also known to pull timing when oil gets too hot. So I wouldn't say gen 1 cars don't need oil coolers. It is not rare to push gen 1 car without oil cooler beyond 270F oil temperature in a summer day. It is a cheap insurance to install an oil cooler to make your car run in more optimal temperature range.

Quick question on said coolers: while they protect the engine in a heavy-duty use case, how about their impact on daily driving? Any risk of running too cold, or seeing much increased warm-up times?

Do the aftermarket coolers have thermostats? And if yes how well do they work?

I'm not interested in putting one on my car, but this is where my question for useless-to-me information led me.

A lot of them do have thermostats. The Full blown kit does, which is the one I had, so anything below something like 200, the oil wouldn’t even circulate to the cooler.

IMO 275F is fine with 5w30...

Indeed mine almost always gets up to 270F indicated at the track, even on cooler days. But temps remain in control (i.e. no "runaway" oil temp rise) even on the hottest days.

IMO, it's not "insurance". Early ('13 model year) gen 1 cars seem to be overrepresented as far as bearing failures both without *and with* oil coolers. I think the earlier cars in particular had oil delivery issues. Oil cooler won't fix that. Also there have been failures with oil coolers due to leaky plumbing (well, at least 1 I can think of anyway).

My car is almost exclusive to track days so I didn't take it into consideration. My car uses Jackson Racing dual radiator oil cooler, so like gen2 cooler, it warms oil from coolant when it is cold. But I don't have a side by side data to measure the warm up speed. My unit does not have thermostats in the sandwich plate as it relies on the engine coolant, which already has thermostats, to cool oil. But I think regular jackson racing and perrin oil cooler both has thermostats in the sandwich plate to prevent oil from over cooled. My car runs at around 190F in highway cruise in 70F ambient temperature, 230-240F on track on 100F track days.