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Just found the Iron Warriors codex i'd abandoned after somewhat completing a rough version at the end of '09, and i've been trawling through some of the stuff. There are captured loyalist vehicles like Crusader, Redeemer and Ares pattern Land-Raiders, whirlwind and basilisk, there's a tactically-retrieved land speeder squadron (all of the above are 0-1 choices in the army, with captured vehicles also 0-3 (so may take 1 land raider Ares, but you may also take 2 more captured vehicles) and there's bit of loyalist tech such as thunder hammers and storm shields along with assault cannons (the latter is only mentioned a few times, a total of 3 if i've counted correctly, and each time listed as a weapon avaliable to obliterators - They're not an option on the captured vehicles either).

I think my argument for all this was that Iron Warriors aren't stupid. Being the masters of siege, it isn't a far cry to have them assault an Imperial Bastion somewhere and loot their stuff or sweep battlefields for usable equipment. They're also fancy with technology, so I wouldn't put it past them to be able to reverse engineer the anti-gravity equipment of a Land Speeder or the inner workings of a thunder hammer/storm shield and then use their foundries to produce it (at a lesser rate than loyalists, of course).

So before I go to work having a go at fixing it up, what does everyone think? I haven't made every loyalist weapons available to everyone, assault cannons are available to obliterators only, thunder hammers are available to Warsmiths, Obliterators and terminators, similarly so with storm shields. (There are several types of Obliterator, not all of them have Asscans, Thammers or SShields). They're the only loyalist weapons (bar grenade launchers, but they're simply enough to figure out and spread liberally throughout the Imperial Guard, someone somewhere will have had a grenade launcher guardsman turn heretic) that I can see.

The loyalist vehicles are also limited as I previously mentioned, the captured vehicles have taken a substantial price hike too; in Codex: Space Puppies, a Crusader is 250pts and a Redeemer is 240pts, in my C: IW they're 275pts and 270pts respectively. The Ares was pinched off a GW datasheet and priced at 325pts, but gained the ability to take sponson multi-meltas for 25pts. It also lost the Asscan and was replaced with a TL-HB, which can be swapped for a Reaper AC (all the land raiders are armed with a hull-mounted TL-HB that can be swapped for a Reaper AC) for 10pts. Whirlwinds cost 100pts, and Basilisks cost 150pts. Chaos stuff like Defilers and Vindicators have taken a small price reduction (defilers especially since IWs created them) but predators have taken a slight rise to account for their extra options.

TL;DR - How much ground is there on which to base a claim that IWs have loyalist stuff because they stole it or retrieved it from battlefields and reverse engineered it, baring in mind that what they have is quite sparse?

fluff is up in the air if i remember correctly, but please remember if you are going to revive the project to add in thunderstrike assault guns

Since the buzz is that a chaos codex might be in the works and out around end of the year, i guess now is a bad time to adress this.
however, since you are tinkering with it id suggest a more tech-minded daemon prince with some slightly more shooty options?

I think captured vehicles and weapons is a good idea for all CSM, not just Iron Warriors, but being so tech minded as you mentioned would imply they might at least have the wherewithall to fix them to a working standard.

Limiting them as you mentioned to a 0-1 or 0-3 choice is sensible too. However, given that it could easily slide into a vanilla marines codex with spikes on if taken too far (not suggesting you will), perhaps include a rule about them being less reliable than IoM kit? Maybe a "Don't push that" mechanic, but with a different fluff reasoning, e.g. lack of spares etc.