Four of us including my 88 year old father did this. One person held the wing tip, one on the inboard leading edge, one on the inboard trailing edge, and one in the cabin with four bolts and a shot-filled hammer.
I tried searching for bolts from the aircraft parts departments of Lowes and Home Depot and Lowes was the only store that had a 7/16" bolt. The problem was, it was about 4" long and threaded almost the entire length. Since I live in the oilfield, I have a lot more choices. I went to a nut/bolt supply store and purchased four 7/16" by 6" long bolts with about a 1" grip or so. Got after them with the grinder and put a nice point and about an inch or two of gentle taper to eliminate the shoulder where the threads meet the bolt shank. I polished up the points on the Scotchbrite wheel. They mic'd slightly undersize.
Before putting the wings on, I tested all four bolts in every hole both in the bulkhead spars and the wing spars to verify the fit. They slid in easily with very little play, but more compared to what the close fit bolts will be.
The main interference was the bottom skin on the fuselage. This was easily remedied when one of the guys slipped a sheet of thin scrap aluminum sheet between the wing root and belly skin (that screws to wing root).
Prior to installing the wings, I put about a 1/8" radius on the top corner of the rear spar brackets (the forked part) to relieve it from possibly hitting the wing rib due to the dihedral.
Back to the bolts - I had some very slight clearance issues with the main gear brackets lining up. It appears just thousandths off. When I pull the wings back off, I'll insert a 7/16" wooden dowl in the spar holes and dremel the powder coat out of them with a small sanding drum and I think that'll be all they need. Its not a very big deal at all.
The rivets heads on the fuselage side just above the rear spar fork were in the way. Fortunately, I had an IA working on the team that brought over a sharp chisel with rounded corners. We simply shaved the rivet heads off and I'll go in with flush heads once I pull the wings back off. With the rivets, I had a forward sweep on the wings and we were missing the line by nearly 1/4" at the wing roots. After shaving the rivets, I got it perfect on one wing and missed by maybe 1/32" on the other.
I have the digital scale level like a lot of folks use for setting the incidence. We leveled the fuselage on all axis. After some debate with my IA friend of what the scale should read for incidence, we went back to Van's instructions. I thought the scale on my level should read 1 degree, but according to the instructions, when you use the 3" spacer on the rear spar and a level just forward of the skin seam, it should read level in order to achieve the 1 degree incidence. I have seen several builders posting pictures showing their scale at 1.0 degrees. I assume their airplanes still fly. If I read wrong, then I hope my airplane will fly.
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Edge clearance on the rear spar was no problem at all. Everything fit miraculously as it does on most of the Van's assemblies. I had plenty of room to work with.......just be careful when drilling and drill straight.
I must say, that we builders put a lot of faith in the design of this kit. Even though pre-punched, pre-fitted, etc, I still had thoughts of, "what if these wing spars don't fit in the hole?". Well they did fit and I am still out of the mental ward for now!
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Hope this helps.
