hey, bash OBX all you want, of the hundreds i have sold over the last four years - and thats just proteges mind you - i have only had two people up to this point call me up and say that they had one break on them. one of those was because the vehicle had broken motor mounts. i've seen proportionally more problems with wagner headers and spool manifolds than what i have seen with an OBX header. there are virtually no alternatives to this header on this car, and none in the same price range. there is the thunder header as an option for this car, and one which i believe is very good. you could get a racing mazda one, which is far worse for the money, a tsudo-style one from ebay with poor fitment, or try and find an AWR, wagner, ractive used as those are all long out of production. every obx header i have installed locally is still on thier respective cars in what is a pretty lousy climate half the year with no issues. i'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but its hard for me to out right consider the header garbage when out of several hundred sold since 2003 i've had problems with less than five of them and you have handmade products by defunct vendors on this forum that fall apart far quicker.
i looked into a wide range of high quality fabricators for making very nice 4-2-1 headers for these cars and the price was at least double what you would pay for one of these. if there are ten people willing to put down $500+ on a 4-2-1 stainless steel American made header, i'll do it. until then, OBX is the best i can do.
OBX has a full warranty on all of thier product, and if you PM me your information I will pass it along to them so we can get you a new header.