Thanks for points that direction, your solution works for me.
meteor --release 1.3.5.1
I change release version to global latest installed version of meteor and works as expected.
Same, stuck at downloading meteor-tool@1.4.0 for about 4 hours 
Same issue. Just sits there. Trying to start a meteor --release 1.2.1 project. Don’t remember having these issues with meteor@1.3.x.
Added 54.192.225.217 warehouse.meteor.com to my hosts file and it appears to have worked. I know that if you have installed Meteorite at some point that it’s a source of big issues.
next time when deleting .meteor try 7zip filemanager and delete the dir there. It works!
Same issue but with templating with meteor update