DCC RPG: Post Apocalypse Armor

So far in the two sessions we've played, there hasn't been much armor floating around. In the first session some slaughtered boat people had their fancy high tech body armor taken, and that's all anyone has gotten.
It was just sort generic, I only threw it in so that they'd get the idea that the boat people were operating at a more advanced tech level than their village. By the end of the last session, they were battling The Shunned, a gang of cut-throats in a city ruins. These are the kind of guys that would have Naked Raygun, Mad Max, New Barbarians type shit.

Now I could just describe the armor, all shoulder pads and codpieces and give it an armor class, but it's such an essential component of what makes road warrior apocalypse shit so rad, I think it needs to be special. As homework I started with what Adam at Kickassistan posted last summer about Armor-less AC and what Claytonian posted over at the G+ DCC group recently.

What I'm stealing from Adam is that a character's reflex save is their armor class bonus and armor reduces damage. From Claytonian I'm pulling the variable damage soak.

What I'm adding to the mix is that any 1s rolled on a soak die breaks the armor one step down the die chain, and that multiple pieces combine to step up the die chain. Some special things will give extra dice. I have to work out the specifics, but here's a quick maybe examples:

Shoulder pad armor: one step up

Spiked shoulder pads: one step up and +1 to AC (those spikes get in the way of wallops)

Motorcycle helmet: two steps up

Leather duster: One Step up

Armored Breastplate: Additional d4 armor die

So let's say Eggfart has gotten herself Shoulder pads, a helmet, a leather duster and an armored breastplate. 

Crack! Vicious clubbing for 6 points of damage. All together she rolls a d4 for the breastplate and a d6 for everything else. And she gets a 1 and a 5. Cool, that soaks up all the damage, but oh no, that 1 means the breastplate is damaged and now is only worth a 1d3. Better kill these Shunned and take their chainmail crochet dress.

Will try and get something more codified before the next time we play, and figure out how exactly the fumble die will work.