I have been working on a EC on latest core for a while. I would like to merge/help you guys anyway I can. We appear to have a similar goal....
What I have working/tested: - GUI control for setting mining and acceptance block size. - Command line options for setting mining and acceptance block size.
It needs testing and some extra work for signalling (on my todo list).
Code is at https://github.com/AllanDoensen/UnifiedBitcoin/wiki .