The polymeric coatings on water injector tubing used in the offshore oil industry must resist corrosion from the injected water, but more importantly must resist mechanical damage from the inspection tools lowered at speed into the tubing. This mechanical damage is produced by the wearing action of the supporting wire against the coating (wireline wear) and by direct impact of the tool against the coating. Current polymeric coatings, although corrosion resistant, do not resist satisfactorily the imposed mechanical damage. The present work addresses this issue and its novelty resides in that the mechanisms and properties required to resist both wireline wear and impact damage of polymeric coatings are being studied together. Based on a preliminary laboratory study of eleven candidate polymeric coatings, two epoxy-based coatings, one ductile, the other filled, were chosen for detailed study to ascertain the wear mechanisms in wireline wear. True tribocouple testing was carried out to reproduce wireline wear in the laboratory by modifying a pin-on-disc apparatus. Standard adhesive and abrasive wear tests were adopted to investigate the adhesive and abrasive components of wireline wear. The predominant wear mechanism in wireline wear was found to be abrasive wear with the filled epoxy coating out-performing the ductile epoxy. However in the standard abrasive wear tests, the modified ductile epoxy performed better than the filled epoxy coating especially at low sliding speeds. This was a result of abrasive wear of the ductile epoxy coating producing swarf tendrils as wear debris which were trapped by the abrasive papers, hence forming a transfer layer and reducing wear rates. This did not occur under wireline wear conditions.