A 6 × 19 point-contact hoisting cable was used as our research object to examine the progress of corrosion of steel wires in a laboratory, simulating the actual working conditions in a coalmine. An electrochemical method was used to investigate the corrosion behavior of steel wires with different surface treatments of a corrosive acid solution. The results show that anode activation of steel wire mainly occurs during pre-corrosion, where the anode activation process of bare steel wires is the fastest as is their corresponding corrosion speed, while the anode activation process of oil coated steel wires and their corresponding corrosion speed are the lowest. During the intermediate and late immersion periods,a passive film is generated on the surface of steel wires, which are gradually damaged with the passage of time. Local pitting corrosion occurs easily on the surface of steel wires with a high-polarization potential.Suitable equivalent circuits were chosen to fit the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) of steel wires over various corrosive times and different surface treatments, which indicate good fitting results.The double electrical layer charge-transfer resistance increases in the sequence: bare steel wire,untreated steel wire and oil coated steel wire and their corrosion resistance decreases in turn, which is consistent with their polarization curves. The oil layer provides a certain protective effect on untreated steel wires, but its effect is not entirely clear.