I assume you used "Total number of occurrences of regular validity/price (0=unlimitted)" to limit the number of renewals for that recurring plan to 4? If that's the case once they hit 4 renewals they can't renew the plan anymore. That's the total number of occurrences of that duration and price that are allowed.
There is no functionality for 1 year duration with installment payments. For that to work you'd need to reset regular_recurrings_used to 0 for their subscription in _cbsubs_subscriptions to allow for 4 payments again; you might be able to do that with CBSubs SQL Actions with something like the below.
Expiration and Deactivation:
Code:
UPDATE `#__cbsubs_subscriptions` SET `regular_recurrings_used` = 0 WHERE `id` = '[subscription_id]'
I've never used such a usecase so the above is untested and might not work, but would be the only way to try and force installment payment functionality.