So, I've got a model with several parts, it is skinned(joint weight painted). I want to combine some of these parts to the main mesh part. But I don't want to loose the skinning. What can I do?

The reason I'm doing this is because I don't need them to be separate meshes, but I had done it that way because they were textured separate. But now I think this would really hurt performance. So I will texture it all as one.

I am thinking export/import weights and then maybe weight hammer, but im not sure if that would work. What you think?