Migrating multiple sites and trying to save link juice

[JordanGodbey]

I have an interesting problem SEOmozers and wanted to see if I could get some good ideas as to what I should to for the greatest benefit.

I have an ecommerce website that sells tire sensors. We just converted the old site to a new platform and payment processor, so the site has changed completely from the original, just offering virtually the same products as before. You can find it at www.tire-sensors.com

We're ranked #1 for the keyword "tire sensors" in Google.

We sell sensors for ford, honda, toyota, etc -- and tire-sensors.com has all of those listed.

Before I came along, the company I'm working for also had individual "mini ecommerce" sites created with only 1 brand of sensors and the URL to match that maker.

Example : www.fordtiresensors.com is our site, only sells the Ford parts from our main site, and ranks #1 in Google for "ford tire sensors"

I don't have analytics on these old sites but Google Keyword Tool is saying "ford tire sensors" gets 880 local searches a month, and other brand-specific tire sensors are receiving traffic as well.

We have many other sites that are doing the same thing.

• www.suzukitiresensors.com (ranked #2 for "suzuki tire sensors") Only sells our Suzuki collection from the main site's inventory

• etc

We need to get rid of the old sites because we want to shut down the payment gateway and various other things those sites are using, and move to one consolidated system (aka www.tire-sensors.com)

Would simply making each maker-specific URL (ie. fordtiresensors.com) 301 redirect to our main site (www.tire-sensors.com) give us to most benefit, rankings, traffic etc? Or would that be detrimental to what we're trying to do -- capturing the tire sensors market for all car manufacturers?

Suggestions?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Jordan

[JordanGodbey]

To potentially simplify my question down:

Is doing a 301 redirect of all the brand-specific minisites (like suzukitiresensors.com) to www.tire-sensors.com the most beneficial thing I can do to not lose rank and traffic, but also to simplify our sites down to 1 URL?