Best practices with Github and synced copy of UE

Hi,

I want to use UE to create my game, but I’m not sure how to use version control.

I’m used to working with Mercurial and Perforce (but not with GIT).

UE is hosted on Github and binary content is downloaded via .bat file.

I want to get the latest “stable” sources (the release branch) and I going to make some changes within the engine (I don’t want them to share back, because those are and will be mainly ugly hacks),
so I want to be on “latest” codes to have easiest process of merging with my changes…

How to “fork” UE into my repo (Github is fine) so I have “own” copy but get changes from the original repo?

And what about binary files (downloaded with .bat file)? Is it ok just to don’t version them (Github has limit anyways) and re-run the .bat from time to time to get latest binary?

I hope you understand my question.

Thanks
J.