Should we 301 redirect an older site to our main site?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  John Pitcher: Our main site is a local web design company. We have also had a smaller vintage web design site for about 6 years which we are now deleting. The vintage web design site is pr0 with little traffic and just a few backlinks. (The business address and phone number is the same as our main site.)
  
  Should we 301 redirect the vintage web design site to our main web design site or is this now against Google's code of practice/frowned upon?
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  Dmitry Grunt: With 301 you can redirect not only good factors (PR or authority), but bad factors too. If your old site was low quality maybe it is not wise to set 301 redirect. ;
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  Ahmad Balavipour: If you want 301 redirect you must redirect all internal pages also.
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  Gregory Kristan: +Dmitry Grunt ;brings up a great point. I would say if these other sites are not that strong and receive little traffic I would not bother with a 301. ;
  
  Chances are those other sites are small so there will be no branding loss
  
  I instead would reach out to the websites that have the old websites listed there and let them know you changed to the new site and the other site is no longer around. That way you can try and build your backlink profile to the new website. ;
  
  Again, as always, make sure you are careful with how safe those websites are
  
  Sorry for the long answer!
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  John Pitcher: +Dmitry Grunt ;and +Gregory Kristan ;Thank you both for very helpful answers. I was slightly uneasy with a 301 which is why I asked the question but had not realised that it could transfer "bad link juice".