Suspension
Because the rear torsion bars are located one behind the other, the wheelbase is longer on the right side than on the left. |
The R3 and R4 had four-wheel torsion-bar independent suspension. This was an innovation which would be copied on a succession of subsequent front-engined Renaults introduced during the 1960s and 70s.
The car features a shorter wheelbase on the left than on the right because the rear wheels are not mounted directly opposite one another. This concept allowed a very simple design of the rear suspension using transverse torsion bars located one behind the other without affecting handling. The front torsion bars were longitudinal. Dampening was contributed by the provision of hydraulic telescopic shock absorbers on all four wheels. Those at the rear were mounted virtually horizontally which avoided the intrusion of rear suspension componentry into the flat floored passenger cabin.
The longitudinal layout of the front-wheel drive engine and transmission with engine behind the front axle, and gearbox/differential in front is identical to the Citroën Traction Avant. The suspension is also very similar, the only difference, being the deletion of the Citroen's flexible beam between the rear wheels, to give the Renault 4 fully independent rear suspension. This is ironic as Louis Renault, the company's founder had been the harshest critic of the Traction at the time of its launch in the 1930s.
Read more about this topic: Renault 4
Famous quotes containing the word suspension:
“Leonid Ivanovich Shigaev is dead.... The suspension dots, customary in Russian obituaries, must represent the footprints of words that have departed on tiptoe, in reverent single file, leaving their tracks on the marble....”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“There are two kinds of liberalism. A liberalism which is always, subterraneously authoritative and paternalistic, on the side of one’s good conscience. And then there is a liberalism which is more ethical than political; one would have to find another name for this. Something like a profound suspension of judgment.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)