Swapped back the old Suntour freewheel, shifters, and rear derailleur yesterday. Indexing works (albeit poorly cause it's Suntour!), but yeah, I'll just have to get by with friction shifting for now...

Given the poor state of the rear hub, after doing some research it seems the following may be advisable: either rebuild the existing wheel (which I have never done and probably would take me forever) with a new 8 speed hub, or purchase a new wheel set with a modern 8 speed hub and find a narrow cassette with something like 11-23 or 12-23 gearing. Does something like that exist? And even if it doesn't, is it too difficult to assemble your own cassette? Given that I want to stick with 7 speed everything so I don't have to change my shifters that I JUST purchased, it's alright to use a 7 speed cassette on an 8 speed hub as long as you use a spacer right?