Raider armor

Raider Armor is a name that refers to various types of armor worn by raiders, usually consisting of rough leather panels held together with wire and string.

Fallout 3
Each variant of Raider Armor in Fallout 3 can be repaired using any of the other Raider Armors. The helmets can only be repaired with other copies of the same model; they cannot be used to repair each other.

Raider Badlands Armor
A bandolier is draped across the front of the apparently leather overshirt (vaguely resembling a tank top), and on the left knee there appears to be some sort of collinder being used as a knee pad. The outfit also includes shorts made from either leather or some variety of canvas-like material, in contrast to the legwear of virtually every other outfit in the game, which feature only trousers. A screwdriver is secured near one boot, presumably to be used as a makeshift boot knife, despite the fact its only function is for aesthetic value. It's also feasible that it is the screwdriver used by the player when picking a lock.

Raider Blastmaster Armor
This armor bears a similarity towards the Predators armor in the Predator film series. It appears to employ a tire of some kind as the shoulder pad and includes a pair of roman sandals as footwear.

Raider Painspike Armor
If you pay close attention to an opponent using melee or unarmed attacks, its health will go down slightly with every hit, implying that the spikes on the armor hurt them when they attack, even though the spikes are not in a suitable position to damage an attacker.

Raider Sadist Armor
Two severed hands are on the waist of the armor. It is especially common around north-east DC.

Raider Arclight Helmet
The Raider Arclight Helmet resembles a welding mask. Interestingly, this item does flatten the character's hair as if they were wearing a normal helmet.

Raider Blastmaster Helmet
The Raider Blastmaster Helmet is the headwear component of Raider Blastmaster Armor.

Comprised of a Fireman's Helmet worn on top of a Gas Mask and possibly a fire-retardant covering, the Blastmaster Helmet confers a small (+5) bonus to your Big Guns and Explosives Skills. Judging by its appearance, it was probably the helmet used by pre-war firefighters.

Raider Psycho-Tic Helmet
The Raider Psycho-Tic Helmet could be described as a leather skull cap with goggles and handlebars jutting out of the sides of the head.

Raider Wastehound Helmet
The Raider Wastehound Helmet appears to be constructed of several pieces of heavy burlap crudely stitched together. It also includes eye protection and tufts of hair.

There is some visual differences between gender versions of the item, as the female version's hair patches go in a straight line down the middle of the skull, similar to a Mohawk, whereas the male version consists of three tufts; two on the sides and one on top.

Cut content
The three cut versions of Raider Armor in the game files have a lower DR than regular Raider Armor (by one point) and can only be obtained through the console.

They are:
 * Hand-Me-Down Raider Armor (visually identical with Raider Sadist Armor)
 * Highway Scar Armor (visually identical with Raider Blastmaster Armor)
 * Sharp-Dressed Raider's Armor (visually identical with Raider Painspike Armor)

There are also two cut Raider Helmets:
 * The Devil's Pigtails (identical with Raider Psycho-Tic Helmet)
 * Pyro Helmet (identical with Raider Blastmaster Helmet save for the missing bonuses)

Fallout Tactics
A superior version of this armor is Vandal Armor.

Modifiers: +20% Damage Resistance.

Location: This armor is generally not available to Player Characters, although is supposedly can occasionally be looted from raiders' corpses. Even if you somehow manage to obtain it, it is pretty much useless, as it is even worse than the starting Leather Armor.

Trivia
In the movie Mad Max 3, Max is hired by Auntie Entity (played by Tina Turner) to "take care of" the sub-chief Masterblaster. As an obvious nod, these armors strongly resemble that worn by various "less scrupulous" characters in the Mad Max trilogy.

Also, the Arclight Helmet bears a striking resembalance to the welders mask worn by some characters in the game Bioshock.