Narrative:

Post maintenance (post annual) flight to check condition of aircraft. Upon initial climb out IFR in a left turn direct; my aircraft was receiving high engine oil temperature warnings on the crew alert system. Sitting right seat was an a&P who conducted the annual inspection of the aircraft. Oil temperature kept climbing to about 245F and my a&P and I both agreed that we should cut short the flight and return to base. At that time I requested a return and vectors for the RNAV runway 35. I was asked if I was declaring an emergency and I said that I was not but would like expedited vectors because I was starting to get concerned if the oil temperature went much higher; I would have an engine failure and thus a true emergency. After receiving vectors and a descent I got into VMC conditions (below the cloud deck) and cancelled IFR. At that time ATC informed me that they were [giving priority handling to me]. At this point I had the airport in visual contact and conducted a visual approach to runway 35. I was handed off to the airport tower and the rest of the flight was uneventful. My maintenance shop is currently troubleshooting and addressing the issue. No known cause yet as to what caused the high engine oil temperature but cylinders number 3 and number 4 were replaced during the annual inspection a week prior to the test flight. There was nothing additional I felt could be done to prevent this from happening as the whole point of the flight was to detect any issues post-maintenance that needed to be addressed.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: The pilot of a Cirrus SR22T elected to return to the departure airport due to high engine oil temperature.

Narrative: Post maintenance (post annual) flight to check condition of aircraft. Upon initial climb out IFR in a left turn direct; my aircraft was receiving high engine oil temperature warnings on the Crew Alert System. Sitting right seat was an A&P who conducted the annual inspection of the aircraft. Oil temperature kept climbing to about 245F and my A&P and I both agreed that we should cut short the flight and return to base. At that time I requested a return and vectors for the RNAV runway 35. I was asked if I was declaring an emergency and I said that I was not but would like expedited vectors because I was starting to get concerned if the oil temperature went much higher; I would have an engine failure and thus a true emergency. After receiving vectors and a descent I got into VMC conditions (below the cloud deck) and cancelled IFR. At that time ATC informed me that they were [giving priority handling to me]. At this point I had the airport in visual contact and conducted a visual approach to runway 35. I was handed off to the airport tower and the rest of the flight was uneventful. My maintenance shop is currently troubleshooting and addressing the issue. No known cause yet as to what caused the high engine oil temperature but cylinders number 3 and number 4 were replaced during the annual inspection a week prior to the test flight. There was nothing additional I felt could be done to prevent this from happening as the whole point of the flight was to detect any issues post-maintenance that needed to be addressed.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.