Got lxpanel running more stable in Openbox, dCore-wily. Googling 'lxpanel right click crash' returns lots of hits. It's obviously not configured out-of-the-box for dCore which contributes to the instability. Although not stable from install like tint2, lxpanel is so nice with Openbox. Will add this to desktop applications wiki. Noting here as my last post indicated it was broken, turns out just senstitive.
Basically remove or update any panel configurations not in your dCore setup, then it recognizes everything and nothing crashes:
* On first run, right click empty panel space -> panel settings -> panel applets -> application launch bar -> preferences. Remove all 'ghost' items and replace with actual onboot system software (eg. terminal, file manager, browser).
* Click on 'advanced' tab and designate file manager, terminal emulator and logout command (eg. exittc).
* A proper config file with these changes gets created (/home/tc/.config/lxpanel/default/panels). Don't manually configure, use right-click panel settings.