This SAE Recommended Practice is applicable to oil-to-water oil coolers installed on mobile or stationary equipment. Such oil coolers may be used for the purpose of cooling automatic transmission fluid, hydraulic system oil, retarder system fluids, etc. This document outlines the methods of procuring the test data to determine the operating characteristics of the oil cooling system and the interpretation of the results. For information regarding application testing of oil-to-air oil coolers for heat transfer performance, see SAE J1468.

The purpose of this document is to provide a procedure for determining the heat transfer performance characteristics of an oil- to-water oil cooler under specified application operation conditions.