the problem with that recall is you cant just look at a belt and say "oh yea its got another 35k miles before it snaps, your good." sometimes you can see that a belt is starting to crack or dry out or whatever but not always.

did the dealer tell you "the belt is fine"? or did they tell you when it was last replaced and show your records of it? if it was the first one, i would go back and raise hell because it clearly wasnt fine. if they only made you aware of how many miles ago it was replaced and left it up to you to use your own judgment if it was ok or not, then theres no reason they should have to fix it.

next time you bring a car to a dealer for service, and it ends up with any service light on after that wasnt there before they touched the car, you take it back and make them fix it for free. do not bring it to another shop and pay them to fix something the dealer did. this also adds reason for the dealer to question the repairs the other shop did and possibly refuse to help you etc.

a good mechanic wont get in the car, crank it, get out and tell you its the timing belt without opening the hood. if they suspect a timing belt snapped, you pop the hood and look, it takes 3 minuits and you should confirm an expensive repair before you tell the customer about it.

 

to clearify ghost i bought the car from a Honda dealer. during the purchase they said the belt was ok so they put in good faith that it should of went longer than it should have thats why theyre paying for most of it. and also when they where fixing things per the sales agreement they caused the srs light to go off but they didnt have the software to turn the light off. thats why i had to take it to another shop and thats were it broke the timing belt. i didnt pay anything so far, ill only be partly paying for the broken timing belt $1000.