No! No! No! Please [1] do not spew out Findlay's JOC refernece to 2-Carbomethoxytropinone and [2] please DRAW THE MOLECULE i have proposed! I have performed Findlays' synthesis many years ago in a galaxy far away and it is as brilliant a synthetic startegy as it is laborious. I am not proposing a coca TROPANE dead on stereospecific knock-off but a Piperidine cousin; hence the name analog! Now, draw a picture of N-Methyl-Piperidine with a keto group in the '4' position[AKA n-Methyl-4-Piperidone, a readily available starting material] directly opposite from the methylamine group. My synthesis proposes that we put a carbomethoxy [methyl ester] next door to the keto group, then reduce the keto group in water [preferably with sodium borohydride stabilized solution] to preserve the 'exo' orientation of alcohol production [please see Findlay's paper for the justification], and then we form a benzoyl ester to that alcohol. What you will now have is a piperidine alkaloid analog. If you place an ethylene bridge across the 2 & 5 positions of the piperidine, you will have a tropane. Why go through all that trouble. I am betting that piperidine analog 'sans the ethylene bridge' should be very active. By the way newbie, I appreciate the way you went after this, but if you like Findlay, look up his little known synthesis that appeared the next year in JOC, he made a pseuopelletierine analog with readily available glutaraldehyde and got activity.