Has anyone experianced diff unit failure in the gearbox, we have a 1600 16v with 33000miles and a hole in the bell housing and a crunching diff noise and a upset owner?

Similar problem here (maybe a little more severe) https://www.fiatforum.com/showthread.php?t=16925 perhaps there is a realationship between these two problems, I believe theengine this diff/gearbox was attached to was 1600 also

The engine in the pics was a 1.4. I don't know if the gearbox is the same as that for the 1.6 16V, I suspect not.

This post has got me spooked! The gearbox on my 1.6 16V Marea has been making an odd noise under load/duress since I got it at 13k - As noone at Fiat could take it seriously, and none on these forums seemed to have any idea what this might be, I've learned to live with it, but maybe now it's done 40k I should start to get a bit more concerned.

Perhaps all these early failures in apparently 'modern' cars would suggest that Fiat deserves to disappear into motoring history with all the other marques that couldn't cut it in the reliability stakes. Perhaps I should go and buy something German, a nice square slab-sided generic box that runs for ever.

um, rover are still alive just!

This isn't a chatroom, I know, and I might just be being argumentative cos I've nothing better to do at work, but Rover are not alive. Only the name lives on, it was resurrected from a pot of names by British Leyland when they thought Austin was too fuddy-duddy. When the rebadging was over, the first new Rover was a Honda Accord.
Honda have so put loads of distance between the two companies since then.

Diff has failed and part of it has punched a hole through the bell housing the other bits have jammed up the diff, two weeks later we have a new gearbox from Fiat £925 ouch, Contacted Fiat saying a Xreg with 33000miles and service history should not fail but no real reply, Yet!!!!!!