I bought a Nishiki 3-speed from my neighbor, and the shifter cable snapped. I was thinking about converting to a single speed anyway, and this seems like a good omen. I'm somewhat novice when it comes to repair, but this seems relatively straight forward. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My main question - do I need to replace the hub?

You do need to replace the hub, as what's currently on there is an internally-geared hub - it has a planetary gear system inside it which you can't remove without disabling the hub. You could always lock the hub mechanism into one of the three gears somehow, but it won't be as efficient as an actual singlespeed as it'll still have the planetary mechanism turning.

Thanks for the response. Do you have any recommendations on what kind of hub I should look for? It still seems like it could be a fun project...even if it might be out of my league a bit.

Well, the type of hub depends if you want a freewheel singlespeed which allows you to coast or a fixed-wheel singlespeed which doesn't. If you don't have much experience building bikes, this might be a bit of a big step, because while wheelbuilding isn't anything like as hard as some people will tell you, it's not really something I'd advise a novice to start with. I don't know what size wheels your bike has, but you may be able to get hold of a prebuild singlespeed wheel in the size you need.

one jury rig would be to use what is left of the shifting mech on the hub ,
to put the hub into 2nd gear.

the one in the middle .. that means the cog turns the hubshell directly,
pull it further and its in a reduction gear.. 3/4 of the 2nd gear ratio.


For a freewheel hub any 5 speed freewheel hub will do, you just recenter the axle,
so the cog and chainring line up.

fixie on that bike doesn't make sense.

Of course replacing the broken cable is the most practical thing to do,

Sturmey Archer or Shimano Hub?.

Ask your local bike shop to get the parts.