it will take up to a warn 16.5 winch, milemarker, superwinch, bulldog, t-max, and quite a few others will work too...we have load tested it with the winch and haven't seen an issue yet....shackle have been tested...as long as someone doesn't get a running start and tug on them (we had someone do that with a chevy and thats not proper usage), they are re-inforced...as for coated, it is our own product called black shield...it is very similar to Line-x