The link to the tutorial for removing the rats nest no longer works in the FAQ section. Can someone provide a working link or point me to another source?
Q. What's the "rats nest"?
A. Here are some threads with pictures of the 12a's rats nest and 13b's rats nest. And if
you feel compelled to do so, here's a link to a tutorial that describes how to remove the rats nest on an FB and another which describes how to remove the rats nest on an SA

 

What is your purpose for removing the rat's nest?

 

Just to clean up the clutter and potential vacuum leaks. None of it is required where I live and some of it may not even be working at this point.

 

I would suggest to actually keep the rat's nest and replace all the hoses with silicon ones.

Here are a couple of engines I've done.

 

Some of those are pretty important. In particular, the one for vacuum advance is critical because without vacuum advance, drivability and fuel economy suffer. I rather enjoy getting 27-29mpg on road trips! Mazda connected the vacuum advance to manifold vacuum and controls it with one of those solenoids. I feel it's important enough that I'm putting a TPS on my sidedraft carb so the computer can still function.

You really want to keep the evaporative emissions system, too, which is integrated with the PCV system which is also a thing you want. If it's broken, don't delete it, fix it. I parked my car in November and started it for the first time last week and it fired right up and the gas didn't go stale over the winter. This is because of the functioning evap system.