We do a lot of the American XB owners reroute their breather hoses from the airbox? My 08 XB12XT doesn't seem to dump oil in the airbox?

well a lot do
as it's oily or moisture puke being fed into your inlet, best
to opt to reroute

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Feros Ferio

That doesn't paint a good picture, but is the oily puke doing the engine any harm? If anything it'll richen the mixture up a bit? I've been reading more on the reroute on the US sites and people hold it up as the miracle cure for all manner of ills, rough running, surging etc?

Not harm exactly, but it doesn't aid combustion in any way. Ask yourself whether race engines feed breathers back into the airbox...
The bigger and freer-flowing breather the better, or breatherS preferably, so that they are not 'fighting' each other, particularly in our sort of engines (lumpy great V-twins)... there's a lot of air getting pushed around under those pistons...
And naturally the 'purer' the ingested air the better, you don't want gobs of snot being thrown at your butterfly...
Engines never used to have closed breather systems, they always used to just breathe to atmosphere, it was only introduced to keep the tree-huggers quiet.

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'98 M2 Razorback, it's a keeper.

All very true Rik. I guess the original questions should have been 'should I rush to do a breather reroute and will it make my bike run as smooth as a well maintained inline four?' Or will my engine expire in short order if I don't do a breather reroute? Although I can see the logical reasoning behind a lot of things, I sometimes question whether doing them will make a measurable difference?

thanks for the advice, food for thought.

No No and No. But if the airbox is off this winter for any reason, for the price of a couple of metres of 3/8 oil line (thin wall preferably) and a couple of plastic Tee's and a plastic plug its well worth the effort.