ASM-G2 Possible Damaged Needle Wheel

I run a g2 on both of my tanks (90g and 29g) the one on the 90 runs great and the level where the bubbles meet the more watery area inside the neck is about 1'' below the lip of the neck. On the one that I have in my 29g the level where the bubbles meet the watery area in the neck is about another 1"-1.5" below where the 90g skimmer level sits. The skimmer on the 29g is missing a couple needles on the wheel. I just replaced a bushing on the skimmer because the guy I bought it from used apparently lost it, and has also modded it so that instead of the stock tubing from the pump to skimmer he used pvc, anyways i ended up taking one of the 90 degree bends he had on it off because i figured that was restricting some flow and it did help a little. But any idea if the few missing needles might be causing its output to be slightly low? And if so would taking a standard impeller and putting brillo material on it to replace it as a "mesh" impeller work to fix the issue?