small gap in clothing mesh

[neunen]

hi there. ive run into a small snag altering one of the vanilla armors and was wondering if someone here may be able to help.

 

what ive done is imported the BoSscribe outfit. removed the larger buttons and metal belt piece (which were separate verts from the main mesh) then exported it. everything works fine until i raise a rifle to aim, and then i notice gaps in the arm pits, where the arm meshes meet the torso mesh (they are separate pieces) that isnt present in the vanilla armor

 

i thought i could get away without reskinning it because i hadnt removed any verts from the main piece, but upon exporting i notice that blender says something along the lines of 0.7043... verts missing (im at work right now so im not entirely sure). does this mean that the # of verts its looking for is different that the remaining number of verts?

 

is there a way to correct this without reskinning the entire body? and if not, whats the best way to reskin a mesh that is divided into parts? (ie the arms are separate from the torso) could i import the vanilla to a second layer and then just bone weight copy from it?

 

heres what i remove on the lower back

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/677/removed.th.jpg

and heres what happens under the armpits

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/3383/whathappens.th.jpg

 

thanks in advance for any help