Okay heres the deal, you ask... """Can I just tape off one leg of the 220, put in a 120 receptacle and use the other leg and the neutral wire, or must I come from the box with a new 3-wire run?"""
YES THIS CAN BE DONE "IN THEORY" AND NO YOU DO NOT NEED A NEW THREE WIRE RUN
If there are three existing wires, a Black and a Red and an equipment grounding conductor, (bare or green) THATS MY BEST GUESS OF WHAT YOU MAY HAVE heres how you would do it in theory (if thats what you indeed have).
1) Use the Black as the 120 volt hot wire and it would connect to a 120 volt single pole 20 amp circuit breaker in your panel HOWEVER THERE MAY BE A PROBLEM IF ITS SAY A NO 6 WIRE THAT MAY NOT FIT TOO WELL IN A 20 AMP BREAKER AND HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET IT TO FIT THE TERMINAL ON A 20 AMP RECEPTACLE!!!!!
2) Use the Red (BUT Id atatch white tape near the ends) as the Neutral and wire it to the panels Neutral Buss HOWEVER THERES AGAIN A PROBLEM IN CONNECTING A 6 GAUGE OR SO WIRE ON A 20 AMP RECEPTACLE !!!!!
3) Use the bare or green as the equipment grounding conductor and it would atatch to the panels Equipment Ground Buss HOWEVER AGAIN IT MAY BE HARD TO CONNECT IT TO THE GROUND TERMINAL ON A 20 AMP RECEPTACLE
NOTE some main panels have seperate Neutral and Ground busses (but bonded if a main panel), on some others there may be only one common buss used for both...
THEORY VERSUS PRACTICAL
Theres no harm in a bigger then required wire BUT A 20 AMP RECEPTACLE AND A 20 AMP CIRCUIT BREAKER may not accomodate such huge wire is what you may run into.
That 120 volt 20 amp receptacle requires a protected hot wire, a Neutral, and an equipment grounding conductor, so if you alreay have two insulated wires and another bare (not insulated) or even an insulated wire YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK IN THEORY its just the physical wire size that requires attention.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION you could use a junction box in an accessible location near the new range and inside it splice three 12 gauge wires (Black, White, Green) to the proper three bigger wires and run the 12 gauge to the receptacle. In the panel you can probably still get the bigger wires into the Neutral and Equipment Ground Buss (they have bigger holes for the bigger wire)
BOTTOM LINE Id use the existing wires because if you still have a 20 amp circuit breaker feeding a 20 amp receptacle and you supply the protected hot wire plus a Neutral and and Equipment Grounding Conductor your okay (even though the wire is much larger then required) and a junction box can be used to reduce down to 12 gauge wire as needed........
John T long retired electrical distribution design engineer and rusty as an old nail on the latest NEC so no warranty BUT THATS HOW ID DO IT
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