Abstract: The comparative experimental study for one smooth tube oil cooler and three pin-fin tube oil coolers was performed by using lubricating oil as heat transfer medium. The experimental results indicate that in the range of experimental study, total heat transfer coefficient of pin-fin tube oil coolers is about 1.4-2 times higher than that of the smooth tube oil cooler. The heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics are greatly different for different structures of pin-fin tube oil coolers. The effects of the structure of pin-fin tube and shell-side flow path number are dominant to influence heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of oil coolers. In the range of experimental study, large pin-fin height is conducive to the oil flow disturbance, but not conducive to the heat transfer on the tube-base heat transfer surface of pin-fin tube; single-pass pin-fin tube oil cooler offers high total heat transfer coefficient and volumetric heat transfer capacity, the global heat transfer performance and the friction characteristics are better than that of two-pass pin-fin tube oil cooler.