so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and finally decided to just ask. i drive a 2019 tacoma and right now i have a mag mount diamond SG7900 sitting on the roof which works fine but i hate the cable running through the door seal, its starting to wear the jacket a bit and i dont love that. was thinking about doing a proper NMO mount through the roof but im kind of nervous about drilling a 3/4 inch hole in a truck i still owe money on lol

my other option is doing the lip mount on the bed rail but ive heard mixed things about ground plane on those. mostly doing local repeater work on 146.520 and the local 70cm machine, not any serious weak signal stuff. anyone running a through-roof NMO on a newer tacoma or similar? and is the lip mount ground plane issue actually a real problem or are people just overthinking it

the lip mount ground plane thing is real but honestly for FM repeater work its not gonna kill you. youre not trying to work EME here. ive had a comet lip mount on my silverado for probably 4 years and it works fine for everyday use, SWR is a little higher than id like on 70cm but 2m is totally flat. the SG7900 is a decent antenna so as long as your feedline losses arent crazy you wont notice much difference vs a perfect ground plane situation

that said if youre planning to keep the truck a while just drill the hole. NMO through roof is the right way to do it, done it on 3 trucks now. use a good grommet, apply some self etching primer to the bare metal before you put the mount in, and youll be fine. i use the comet M-24M mount which is a nice low profile unit. resale hit is basically nothing if you plug it with the cap when you sell

yeah drill the hole man, the mag mount cable situation drives me crazy too and i always end up with a chewed up jacket after a year. ive got a tram 1185 on an NMO on my 4runner and it honestly outperforms every mag mount ive tried just because the connection is solid and the ground is actually the roof not some rubber suction cup situation. tacoma roof is thin-ish but totally doable with a step bit, just go slow