Ragdoll not 'applying' to skinned mesh?

I can't seem to actually get the ragdoll to 'apply' to the skinned mesh renderer. If i turn off / disable the animator component after hitting play, so mecanim loses any 'control'; at that point i can see the colliders for the ragdoll flop down in the scene view. But the meshes themselves don't conform to the bones transforms anymore.. They aren't being deformed it seems and the whole model just stays stiff rigid. I say meshes because, I've exported my model from blender with a few different objects for various body parts, so there are actually a few 'skinned mesh renderers'. Thanks if anyone can point me in the right direction! -- To give some clarification, i have now tried combining all the mesh objects so i only have one skinned mesh renderer. It still doesn't fix my problem, when i disable the animator the mesh stays at its last position and the colliders can be seen reacting/falling appropriately sort-of "disconnected" from the mesh.